While most of the applications I covered in my most recent post relate to pharma sales activity, clinical trials is another area where mobile is providing innovation that is well worth mentioning.

When a company is trialing a drug, the value of immediate information for reactions is tremendous. And that is an understatement. By placing the right mobile app on the devices of the trial subjects, doctors and internal teams I can insure that the necessary communications loop is closed and I can insure that real-time feedback is provided.  This speed allows a pharma company to process and react to issues very quickly.  There is also an audit trail from the reporting of the issue to the receipt of it by handlers – also captured in real time.

Then there is the case of marketing. When it comes to handling publicity and advertising, pharma marketing is moving to new mobile frontiers.  In recent months, Apple has acquired a mobile advertiser, which it intends to implement as the advertising control for its devices.  Android has taken the opposite approach by leaving advertising open.

Can pharma use these and other capabilities to market their products and create a large awareness of related messaging?  Absolutely! There are many possibilities, including sponsored applications, application banners and making use of the mobile Web, to name just a few.  Emerging techniques for marketing to the mobile user WILL create significantly more responses.  Keep in mind as well that marketing by way of mobile devices will also be able to take advantage of location awareness and personalization to provide ever greater positive user experiences.

Mobile is taking the business world and its data to consumers directly, and this is indeed powerful.  A good example of this is to note how pharma fulfillment companies are providing not only order capabilities, but drug interaction notification, medication lookup and alternative recommendations.  Pharma companies that want to maintain their competitive edge will have to plan for reaching consumers and the best way to do this is clearly through mobile applications.

In the next five years, pharma companies without a mobile strategy will be exposed in ways never before imagined. Get the Mobile Masters on your team started today in planning your mobile future – mobile laggards will not survive!

The heavily regulated world of the pharmaceutical industry provides the ‘perfect storm’ setting – so to speak – for deploying ‘applied mobility’ (it’s like applied physics, only more fun). This isn’t an environment for your $4.99 AppStore app!

Pharma is rapidly moving from the static world of PowerPoint and paper-based documents to dynamic digital presentations (aka e-detailing) suited for devices like the iPad (it isn’t a secret – iPads are rapidly proving to be huge in pharma). This transition to digital presentations, however, is a highly regulated area, and one that has left a slew of lawsuits on improper pharma marketing in its wake.

So what secret sauce does mobile add to this regulated environment? Well, for starters a mobile device with GPS can automatically capture date, time and location every time a presentation is given – even when a device has no Internet connection. This captured on-the-fly metadata is then delivered automatically into back end systems whenever a connection is available. And? Ah…the ‘and’ here is the invaluable ability to keep a fully auditable history on hand and immediately available to anyone who might need it (including those pesky regulators).

A truly well-designed mobile application removes the variability in quality of records and automates data collection.

Take document tracking for example. A sales person is meeting with a doctor and wants to provide the most recent product information for a drug. Through the power of the mobile app, one can simply enable sending a digital version of the document directly from the field, while recording time and date and the doctor’s information.

All the salesperson has to do is select a file from a list and enter the doctor’s e-mail address. This delights the sales person. Even better, it delights the sales person’s target customer – the doctor, whose time is extremely valuable. The ease of this solution and the delight it brings to both parties here is extremely powerful.

Let’s next consider the serious regulatory issues that pharma companies deal with around drug samples, which have to be tightly monitored, recorded and closely tracked. This has been a paper-based process for many years – and one fraught with failure and poor ‘audit-ability’ due to a lack of process enforcement and loss of records.

OK, so let’s say a pharma sales person has met with a doctor and is going to leave a sample. From his mobile device he can scan the sample’s barcode and capture the doctor’s signature. With a well-designed system, this sets in motion a number of things: there is now a recorded drop for audit purposes, and inventory information for account and drug expiration information. All of which the sales person can set alerts for and pull proactively.

Meanwile, keep in mind that on the back end there may very well be a number of different databases in the information loop. Our smart mobile app handily takes care of such composite scenarios, immediately populating all back office databases and/or application servers with the a simple click of a ‘submit’ button.

From the above examples it becomes easy to see that one of the most powerful aspects of mobility is data capture at the ‘point of presence.’ This means putting applications in the hands of people at the most relevant, meaningful time and place to make an impact.  Going back to sample tracking, what happens if I provide the application to the proper employees at the hospital and allow them to directly handle inventories? This closes the interval of inventories, ensures no expired medications are in stock and closes the supply loop to ensure that enough products are available.

There are many other interactions that pharma companies must keep track of that can be automated with mobility, including how often sales folks market to doctors and annual expenses spent for these efforts. Let’ssay that a pharma sales rep sponsors a lunch event to discuss the results of a clinical trial. The rep can take digital signatures on through a mobile device, take a picture of receipts and submit this data instantly. The mobile solution then ties these items together, writing the data to various back end systems (expenses to finance systems, attendees and dollar figures to audit systems, and so on).

Clearly this leaves behind newly empowered mobile users who become far more productive and far better positioned to make smart choices exactly at the time and place they need to.

It is no exaggeration for me to say that by coupling today’s powerful mobile devices with our smart mobile applications, pharma companies now have the ability to not just go paperless, but to really empower their employees and give them a significant competitive edge.

Jump to Part 2.

Have you seen HBO’s documentary “A Table in Heaven“? It’s about the fabled NY restaurant Le Cirque and it’s revival a few years ago. The restaurant was THE place to be back in its hay-day. Politicians, movies stars, captains of industry and anyone else noteworthy flocked to the restaurant. But unfortunately the restaurant went out of favor with the “in crowd” and they had to re-invent themselves to stay relevant and recapture their magic. It was a complete overhaul, not just redoing the menu or redesigning the decor, but completely moving to a new location and adopting a new attitude. At the end of the documentary, the reinvention was considered a success when they received a 3 star rating in the New York Times.

The parallel that I draw here is to Microsoft and Windows Mobile. Back in the day, Microsoft was pretty much the only game in town for building complex mobile apps. But now it’s almost an anachronism. It’s as out of place in today’s world of iPhone and Android, as much as ordering coq au vin in today’s trendy fusion restaurants. But Microsoft has taken a bold step like Le Cirque and is trying to completely overhaul their mobile OS. Coming soon will be Windows Phone 7 and so far the critics are giving favorable reviews. As we saw with Le Cirque, however, critics will only get you so far–ultimately it’s the diners or users that will determine whether the restaurant or device will be relevant again.

The elite restaurants (some would call them snobby) typically require gentlemen to wear a jacket and sometimes even a tie in order to dine in the establishment. This policy presumably keeps out the riff-raff and ensures that the dining experience is elevated for all in the restaurant. It’s the exception that an exceptional restaurant would NOT have such a policy. In NYC, one such exception that I’ve frequented is Babbo–run by former Iron Chef America and James Beard award winning chef Mario Batali. With a casual dress policy and rock music playing on the speakers, it tries to paint itself as the anti-snobby elite restaurant. However, it did end up losing it’s lone Michelin Star in 2009–for reasons that are unclear.

In the mobile world, no device is snobbier that the iPhone (admit it you iPhone users–you WANT to flaunt that device!). Development on the iPhone is like the jacket policy for dining in elite restaurants. You need to learn their code (Objective C) and follow their extensive guidelines in order to get past the velvet rope. But now Android comes along and they want to open up fancy dining (or fancy mobile apps in this case) to any developer (read this). Will developers flock to Android with their flip-flops and leave their jacket wearing iPhone brethren behind? Or will this open policy lead to unrefined apps and a loss of quality for Android? Time will tell.

If you are asking this question, you don’t get out much. There has been an incredible amount of coverage on this topic in recent months. Let me break it down.

HTML5 is exciting in part because it provides a capability to build an application once and apply it to both desktops and mobile devices.

HTML5 has other powerful features, but this desktop-mobile issue is key. With the fragmentation of browsers and mobile operating systems, this has been a long time coming. Though HTML5 support is becoming a true standard – one which is starting to be implemented widely - it is not yet happening across the board.

The prime outlier today is Microsoft, which in true Microsoft fashion has implemented its own proprietary technology. Perhaps you’ve heard of Silverlight? Even though this is significant, as many corporations have standardized on Internet Explorer (Silverlight’s predecessor), browsers like Google’s Chrome, and Apple’s Safari support HTML5 and can be installed on a Windows desktop.

So why all the press? There can be significant cost savings with HTML5. The developers themselves are less expensive and development time is shorter. There are significant public resources out there for developers too. In the short term it will be interesting to see how Adobe and Microsoft gain/lose market share as the spec is adopted by an ever growing set of browsers.

Even gourmets like us have to watch what we eat sometimes. Fat, calories, carbs, sugar, salt..the list goes on. Some people take it to the extreme to monitor everything they eat to make sure they maximize their food intake. You could call this “return on eating” or ROE. They won’t eat anything unless they know they are getting some form of ROE benefit (fiber, vitamins, antioxidants, etc.).

For mobility, many companies take this investment very seriously (as well they should) and try to justify mobile projects through detailed ROI analysis. For a field service app it could be how many more jobs can a tech squeeze in a day by using a mobile app, or how much on-hand inventory can I eliminate through real-time ordering. It definitely makes sense to calculate an ROI in such use cases. However, there are other instances where ROI is fuzzier. Take consumer apps. You know that your customers want mobile apps, but how can you justify the cost? Will a mobile consumer app save you money or make you money? It’s hard to say.

Just as with food, some things you shouldn’t really try to justify or over analyze if it feels right to do (or eat) and if it will make you happy. When having dinner with friends, why pass on a delicious slice of chocolate cake when everyone else is enjoying their creme brulee or cheesecake? Forget the ROI or ROE, join the crowd and make yourself and your customers happy! Don’t focus solely on the investment costs of mobility and know that by giving your customers a great app, they will remain satisfied and loyal to you.

McDonald’s, Burger King, or Wendy’s? Big Mac, Whopper, or…umm, a big square burger? For those of us gourmets that frequent fast food chains, these three are typically the go-to restaurants. Each has their trademark sandwich that has their respective followings. Sure, we may jump from one place to another once in a while to try something new (bring back the McRib!) or if it’s more convenient, but usually we favor one over another given a choice.

Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint? Network coverage is still the primary reason for choosing a wireless provider, just as a convenient location is the main driver for choosing a burger joint, but increasingly carriers are looking to have their own special burger to attract customers. For AT&T it’s the iPhone, for Verizon it’s the Droid and now for Sprint it’s the 4G EVO. Will Verizon ever get their own Big Mac–i.e., the iPhone? Maybe. But how do you know it’ll be the same Big Mac you know and love. Maybe the special sauce will taste different (maybe more data plan restrictions on Verizon?), so you never know.

In the end it’s about the entire experience, not just the burger. Just look at T-Mobile and the Nexus One. It’s like Carl’s Jr. offering their $6 burger. No matter how tasty the burger (or how great the device) I’m not going to get it if I can’t eat it when I’m hungry (or if I can’t use the phone where I need to).