A Master Concept

The heavily regulated pharmaceutical industry contends with a myriad of compliance requirements from a variety of regulatory bodies. Thousands of compliance requirements for the industry mean that any given product or process can have dozens or even hundreds of detailed requirements.

Managing all those requirements and the data associated with them is tricky, but critical. For a long time, data warehousing was the only method available. It was better than nothing, yet it wasn't quite doing the job. That's because a data warehouse just holds the data — it doesn't necessarily organize, manage and distribute the data.

Master data management (MDM), on the other hand, does all those things. It relies on a central repository that can retrieve information and synchronize with the various systems that need the data. Traditional data warehousing simply doesn't have the same flexibility and capabilities that MDM has.

In the pharmaceutical industry, MDM is used to combine large amounts of supply chain and inventory data with sales and marketing data. In addition to helping pharmaceutical companies understand supply and demand issues, this kind of knowledge also helps indentify or prevent drug counterfeiting. It also assists in drug recalls, privacy management and marketing opt-in solutions for patients as well as physicians.

Primarily, however, MDM is being used as a compliance-management tool to manage common data-integration issues. By investing in a technology platform that can support a variety of complex compliance initiatives rather than addressing each regulatory mandate with a single-point solution, pharmaceutical companies are establishing a regulatory framework that helps them adequately meet any compliance mandate that affects them.

The results are in the return on investment, says the industry. And as more pharmaceutical companies experience the positive returns, the concept is gaining popularity. After all, what firm doesn't want to be more effective, efficient and profitable while keeping the government out of its business?

Is your organization looking for IT people who have the skills to execute MDM? Contact Lisa Santangelo, Senior Technical Recruiter at The Connors Group, at lisa@theconnorsgroup.com or 201-537-0033 to learn how we can find the people you need.