How EMD Serono is improving patient care with personalized, AI-powered insights from Tableau

Suresh Martha works at the intersection of two industries that are rapidly evolving with advancements in AI: business intelligence and biopharma/healthcare. He is the head of data-driven innovation and analytics at EMD Serono—the healthcare business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany in the United States. Suresh leads a team focused on commercial and medical reporting, as well as data science, providing support across the organization, from sales and marketing to patient support programs.

Suresh presented at Dreamforce to share how his team uses Tableau—including the AI-powered Tableau Pulse, part of Tableau Cloud—to improve operational efficiency and patient care through innovative analytics initiatives. Their goals include:

• Enhance self-service analytics to reduce ad hoc requests.
• Increase analytics adoption among less data-savvy users.
• Surface new insights automatically with embedded AI.
• Infuse insights into the flow of work.

EMD Serono is no stranger to innovating with machine learning and AI. For years, Suresh and the analytics group have been operationalizing predictive models to assist the sales and marketing teams. They predict new leads by analyzing the prescribing behavior of their doctor network and then try to find look-alike profiles that may become new (or better) customers. They also analyze sales interactions to generate better leads for different customer profiles.

Generative AI has introduced a lot of potential for Suresh’s team to streamline the analytics solutions they’ve already invested in. “Transitioning to Tableau Pulse makes it easier to do many of the things that we’ve been building in house over the last eight years,” he shared.

Facilitating fast analysis with natural language

Most sales reps at EMD Serono spend 15 to 20 minutes sifting through multiple reports to gather insights on a customer. It often takes three to five different reports to determine which drugs are being prescribed most, by which doctors, and how many patients each doctor has on specific medications—now imagine doing this before every customer interaction!

With Tableau Pulse, sales reps can simply ask questions in natural language and get immediate responses without navigating to different reports to find the data they need. “People are super excited about this functionality,” Suresh said. “Especially to be able to access insights on their phones, because they're always on the move.”

Using natural language also helps those who are less comfortable navigating dashboards to find the information they need. Suresh estimates 20 to 25% of the company (and broader industry) want digestible insights without having to interpret a dashboard. To meet these users where they are, Suresh’s team empowers them to just ask questions and get answers—all in plain English.

“We’re making new tools available so every employee can utilize data to make informed  business decisions, rather than relying on gut feeling,” Suresh shared. His hope is that within a year, Pulse is widely adopted.

These efforts also promise to minimize ad hoc requests to build reports, empowering less data-savvy employees to monitor relevant metrics on their own. Building on their robust data lake and existing infrastructure, Suresh and his team are working to enable employees to ask questions on the fly through Pulse. This way, anyone can get results without needing to rely on Suresh’s team for small, ad hoc requests.

Surfacing hidden trends with the power of AI

Another initiative by the analytics group at EMD Serono involves ingesting data into Tableau Cloud to see what Pulse can uncover with AI—especially new insights folks aren’t getting from exploring dashboards on their own.

By looking at data from every stage of the journey, Tableau’s AI can help the team identify opportunities for better care and alleviate any bottlenecks that doctors or patients experience. For example, are there certain doctors or stages in the drug delivery process that are causing delays? Or, how can they minimize the turnaround times for much-needed medications?

Employees at EMD Serono can access Tableau Pulse on their mobile phones to easily follow metrics, such as medication referrals (left two images) and turnaround times from prescription to delivery (right two images). Note: these images contain mock data.

Infusing insights into the flow of work

Suresh and his team understand the value of delivering personalized, contextual, and intelligent insights into the tools where people already work. One initiative Tableau is helping to elevate is what the team calls “next best actions.”

The idea is to send every sales rep a few actionable insights each day, based on the relevant data and machine learning model outputs for their specific geographic location. This helps them understand what is most critical about their sales area without having to go looking.

For example, rather than making an equal number of calls to healthcare providers at regular intervals, a sales rep can prioritize and optimize their interactions based on data-driven suggestions. Efficiency gains like these, achieved through Tableau, can offer significant benefits.

Another innovation, this time utilizing the Tableau REST API, has already transformed the company’s ability to access account information while on the go. Knowing that the majority of the organization spends a lot of time in Outlook, Suresh and his team created a solution that allows anyone at the company to get a PDF report on any customer delivered via email—without ever signing in to their Tableau environment.

“Sometimes people think too narrowly about Tableau as a reporting tool,” Suresh said. “But there are so many useful features—a lot of them out of the box—that can piggyback onto your own unique solutions and really benefit your organization.”

Advice for organizations adopting AI analytics

Suresh offers some words of wisdom for those looking to incorporate AI analytics solutions at their organizations. It’s important to remember that AI relies on a few things:

1. Your infrastructure architecture: You have to have the computing power and the right architecture to support AI models.
2. Your data: You’ve probably heard the phrase “garbage in, garbage out.” For accurate information, AI models require clean, very granular data.
3. Governance: Especially in a highly regulated industry like healthcare, be sure you have guardrails in place to secure your data and govern the use of generative AI.

“A lot of what a model generates can be beneficial as long as you’re mindful of principles and guardrails,” Suresh added. “It all depends upon how you take guidance and then execute on the output.”

Tableau Pulse is helping Suresh deliver on the company’s broader goal to embrace AI for new efficiencies and improved outcomes. And team Tableau can’t wait to see what his innovative team and organization will accomplish next!

Watch Suresh's presentation from Dreamforce, available on demand on Salesforce+.

Learn more about Tableau Pulse, or give it a try in a free trial of Tableau Cloud.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of his employer.

EMD Serono, the healthcare business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany in the US, works to transform lives by developing and delivering meaningful therapies. The company aspires to create, improve, and prolong life for people living with difficult-to-treat conditions like infertility, multiple sclerosis and cancer.

Suresh Martha is the Head of Data-Driven Innovation and Analytics at EMD Serono, the healthcare business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany in the US. He leads a team of data professionals who are passionate about transforming data into insights and actions that improve patient outcomes and drive business growth. Suresh has 19 years of experience in data warehousing and business intelligence with a strong background in BI systems design, planning, and strategy implementation.