We are frequently asked, "Should my company buy or build our platform?" When it comes to this question, the truth is, your company is unlikely to fall squarely on one side or the other.
The truth is there is rarely a clear-cut buy vs. build choice. It’s more useful to think of it as build vs. build, with companies developing some digital capabilities in house and partnering with others.
Our latest white paper, Building a Digital Health Platform That Scales: How to Know When to Partner (and Why), explores these very complex decisions faced by biopharma and medtech executives who are aiming to develop a digital health platform.
When you're ready to start building your digital health platform, you have two options. You can build a custom underlying platform and digital health solution in house, which will require internal talent and resources, plus third-party resources on an as-needed basis.
Or you can work with a platform partner who leverages their expertise to configure their pre-built platform for your digital solutions. This option empowers you to scale for future product launches, allowing your team to focus on differentiating your product offerings.
Here are a few considerations to keep in mind while making your choice:
While it may be tempting to keep the build in-house, many companies find that they are ultimately unable to maintain the platform and additional launches over time. And they still have to work with external partners, such as task-specific vendors.
Key challenges to managing your build in house include:
Partnering up and purchasing a digital health platform may initially feel uncomfortable. But you'll gain so much by initiating a partnership with a digital expert and purchasing a compliant platform. Remember, organizations used to be uncomfortable about transitioning to the cloud, feeling it would be better to maintain their own data center. But now it's a competitive disadvantage to not be on the cloud.
Key advantages of collaborating include:
"At Roche, most of our commercial products and clinical trials are multinational, so our regulatory strategy needs to be contemplated across regions and across varying regulations. This will be the case for most leading biopharma companies. If you leverage a solution like BrightInsight that meets the most stringent requirements and maintains compliance as part of their managed service, you don’t have to worry about your regulated digital solutions in the U.S. versus Europe versus the U.K. and so on. You just know they’re compliant."
—Paul Upham, Head of Smart Devices, Roche/Genentech
The BrightInsight Platform has pre-built capabilities to meet most core digital health needs out of the box and can be configured to support specific use cases. The Platform includes robust user onboarding and account management tools, including integration with external identity systems via single sign-on (SSO), as well as healthcare functionality, like medication management, electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePRO), physician alerts and more.
We replace the need for lengthy and complex "build from scratch" implementations. Instead, we offer a proven platform and configurable solutions, built to meet the most stringent global security, privacy and regulatory requirements.
"After conducting a rigorous evaluation, we selected BrightInsight because it has the only regulated solution with a robust Quality Management System and comprehensive privacy and security certifications. BrightInsight’s Platform allows us to focus on therapeutic innovation rather than the underlying digital technology."
—Brian Johnson, Senior Director, Customer Engagement Management, CSL Behring
Learn more by reading Building a Digital Health Platform That Scales: How to Know When to Partner (and Why).