Salesforce’s AI-powered Life Sciences Cloud now available for pharma and MedTech companies

Salesforce announced the general availability of its Life Sciences Cloud, a platform for pharmaceutical (pharma) and medical technology (medtech) organizations that uses data, automation, and trusted AI to personalize patient and healthcare professional (HCP) engagement and streamline clinical operations.

Why does it matter?

Recruiting candidates is one of the most time-consuming parts of clinical trials, taking up to one-third of each study's length. In addition, 80% of trials fail to onboard the required number of patients and have to extend their timelines as a result.

After a drug becomes available, keeping patients on therapy is also difficult — one study found that nearly 40% of patients stopped their medication within the first year.

AI can help pharma and medtech companies improve efficiency and better support patients and HCPs, whether it's during clinical trials or staying connected with them. In fact, 86% of leaders in healthcare and life sciences believe leveraging data and AI will be key to their success in the next five years.

How does it work?

Life Sciences Cloud leverages Salesforce's Einstein 1 Platform to help provide an AI-powered, end-to-end solution that connects teams across every area of patient and HCP engagement to assist with improving patient enrollment and recruitment processes, trial onboarding, and communication:

• Participant Recruitment and Enrollment enables contract research organizations (CROs), sites, and sponsors to identify qualified, diverse candidates and recruit them to appropriate clinical trials. Using generative AI, clinical research coordinators and site personnel will be able to review and match patients to trials based on prescreening and eligibility criteria, thereby reducing manual screening and assessment time.
• Patient Benefits Verification helps life sciences organizations quickly determine out-of-pocket costs and eligibility for financial assistance for pharmaceuticals or medical diagnostics. This feature equips them with coverage analyses, service level agreement (SLA) expirations, and proactive alerts and recommendations related to a patient's coverage — all on a single dashboard.
• Patient Program Outcome Management will help patient service teams and coordinators capture and automate the impact of their education and support programs, mapping patient milestones to program outcomes through assessments and event reporting. For example, patient services teams can create a tailored engagement strategy that reminds patients to take their medications.
• Life Sciences Cloud for Customer Engagement streamlines interactions to provide a full view of HCPs across different pharma and medtech teams — including marketing, sales, and medical science liaisons — to avoid redundant outreach and maintain audit trails for compliance.
• Unified Data Platform for Life Sciences uses Salesforce Data Cloud and MuleSoft for Life Sciences to help create a complete, harmonized view of each patient and HCP. Data from structured and unstructured sources like emails, meeting notes, call transcripts, scientific publications, and product documentation is ingested and connected into a common data model and then used to build unified patient profiles, personalize interactions, and connect HCP and patient engagement.

On the record

"With a backdrop of rising drug costs, frustrated doctors, confused patients, and regulatory scrutiny, life sciences organizations must find ways to do more with less. AI opens the door for pharma and medtech organizations to reimagine their operations while promoting a focus on patients," said Frank Defesche, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Life Sciences. "With these new innovations from Salesforce, life sciences organizations can access the power of predictive and generative AI to make the best use of their data quickly, while helping to automate administrative tasks and identify potential risks in real time."

Availability

Participant Recruitment and Enrollment capabilities with screening, e-consent, and simple randomization are generally available now. AI enhancements, including matching for patient recruitment, are expected to be available in late 2024.

Pharmacy Benefits Verification is generally available as a part of Life Sciences Cloud, while Patient Program Outcome Management is in pilot today and will be generally available in October 2024.

Lastly, Life Sciences Cloud for Customer Engagement will be generally available in September 2025, and Unified Data Platform for Life Sciences — including Data Cloud and MuleSoft for Life Sciences — is generally available today.