At Pharma 2025 in Barcelona, one message rang loud and clear: Pharma organizations that connect insights across functions—fueled by technology and unified around the patient—are driving faster, smarter, and more impactful decisions.
During a standout panel moderated by Galapagos’ Camille Hoffman, leaders from Napo Therapeutics, Takeda, and Within3 shared how they’re turning siloed data into integrated strategies. The conversation spotlighted the urgent need to prioritize insights over raw data and underscored how agile cross-functional teams—powered by AI—can identify what truly matters.
Putting the patient at the center
“The final customer for all functions should be the patient,” said Michaela Pantaleoni, chief market access officer at Napo Therapeutics. It’s a perspective that transforms insights from static observations into shared, strategic intelligence.
Pantaleoni outlined three imperatives for driving this shift:
- Align all teams on the patient as the ultimate stakeholder
- Create a central repository for insights
- Encourage regular cross-functional dialogue to act on them
From data overload to decision-making clarity
Too often, pharma organizations collect insights but fail to prioritize them. Clemens Muller, senior director at Takeda, shared how his team addressed this challenge through their “INDIE” initiative—a structured funnel from insight collection to triage and dissemination.
“It’s essential to define what challenge we’re solving and ensure that insights from medical, commercial, and market access are connected globally, regionally, and locally,” Muller said. He also emphasized the importance of asking “so what?” to separate true insights from noise.
Uncovering blind spots with AI
Lance Hill, CEO of Within3, shared one of the session’s compelling real-world examples. A top pharma company acquired an asset in an unfamiliar therapeutic area with a tight launch timeline. Rather than rely on legacy processes, the company worked with Within3 to build a “market landscape in a box” using GDPR-compliant data sources—scientific literature, congress presentations, social listening, claims data—and layered AI on top.
The result? A surprising insight that shifted their launch strategy: Mental health professionals, not the expected specialists, were initiating key treatment conversations. “They weren’t even in the target audience,” Hill explained. “But these providers were influencing care in ways the team hadn’t anticipated. That realization drove an immediate pivot in strategy.”
Creating momentum with agile teams
Pantaleoni also shared how a rare disease initiative at Napo Therapeutics embraced a non-hierarchical, cross-functional model. Daily 15-minute standups helped the team move quickly and bring diverse expertise to bear. “Nobody was in charge, and our first rule was to start from the patient,” she said. “Every two weeks, we had something new to present to leadership.”
In conclusion, Pantaleoni highlighted the warmth and strength that come from having a shared purpose, emphasizing how an integrated, trust-based approach enabled the team to exchange information openly and transform it into collective insight.
Medical affairs as an engine for insights
Muller emphasized the evolving role of medical teams as central insight generators. Trends like digital engagement metrics, third-party data integration, and transparent knowledge sharing are elevating the role of medical affairs in strategic planning.
Measuring what matters
For Hill, the linchpin of any insights strategy is measurable impact. “If insights are just dropped into a meeting with no follow-up, it becomes a chore instead of a strategic process,” he cautioned. Tracking how insights drive real decisions is essential for sustaining momentum.
He also encouraged teams to look deeper at influence: “When you can tie broader market-level sources back to the individual customer, you uncover important truths—like whether someone criticizing your product online is an actual scientific influencer or just making noise.”
Ready to go deeper?
Learn more about how industry leaders can create unified insight strategies that drive action, improve speed to market, and keep the patient at the center in the full Pharma 2025 takeaways sheet.
