{"id":102931,"date":"2026-02-26T07:35:35","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T10:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tech.einnews.com\/article\/895743987"},"modified":"2026-02-26T07:35:35","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T10:35:35","slug":"differentiation-will-come-from-superior-decision-intelligence-not-tech-deployment-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/2026\/02\/26\/differentiation-will-come-from-superior-decision-intelligence-not-tech-deployment-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Differentiation will come from superior decision intelligence, not tech deployment alone’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Prabha
Prabha Sinha, co-founder, ZS<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

New Delhi: In global healthcare today, adopting technology is no longer what sets organisations apart. It is simply the baseline. Most large pharmaceutical and medical device companies have already digitised their core functions, from CRM platforms to AI tools. The real shift now, observes Prabha Sinha, Co-founder, ZS, is not about adding more technology but about using it more intelligently.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s digital to create customer impact and how the ROI is really in the customer impact piece. Digital can keep the lights on, like SAP\u2014an infrastructure play,\u201d he added. \u201cBut the real return on investment comes when digital drives customer impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

That shift\u2014from infrastructure to impact\u2014is reshaping how life sciences organisations think, act, and compete.<\/p>\n

From Projects to Digital Assets: Four Engines of Impact<\/b><\/p>\n

Sinha outlined four key \u201cengines\u201d driving the shift from traditional projects to scalable digital impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne is that through digital, you can move from work being done by project teams to work that\u2019s done by digital assets,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Earlier, major business decisions\u2014such as restructuring a sales force for a new product launch\u2014could take up to a year. \u201cTen years ago it would take six months to study it and another six months to implement it. So the cycle was typically about a year. Now that cycle is down to three months,\u201d Sinha noted.<\/p>\n

Second, decision-making cycles have compressed dramatically. \u201cDecision making can be speeded up or planning and execution can be merged,\u201d he said. Instead of quarterly planning cycles, \u201cnow it happens on the fly. It\u2019s become a continuous process, rather a discrete process,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Third, digital tools are breaking silos. \u201cTraditionally, especially in large companies, the sales, service, different marketing departments are quite siloed\u2026 and now digital is cutting across these vertical boundaries,\u201d Sinha explained.<\/p>\n

Finally, he emphasised the role of centralised analytics: \u201cAll this is possible through the centralization of marketing and sales analytics\u2014that\u2019s the fourth piece.\u201d Metrics, he said, are shifting \u201cfrom infrastructure\u2026 where metrics are around adoption usage to metrics around impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

How the West Is Moving and India\u2019s Expanding Role<\/b><\/p>\n

In the United States and Europe, AI-driven sales and marketing is already deeply embedded. \u201cOf the top 100 pharma companies in the US, all of them are doing it,\u201d Sinha said, referring to AI and analytics in customer engagement. Differences lie in sophistication, but \u201cin terms of assisting salespeople, assisting marketers with how to deploy resources, that\u2019s kind of a universal AI-driven activity now.\u201d<\/p>\n

India, meanwhile, is not merely supporting this transformation\u2014it is shaping it. Around 70 per cent of ZS\u2019s global workforce is based in India, and much of the intellectual property behind ZAIDYN, the company\u2019s proprietary AI-powered platform, is developed here.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, India is not just a cost centre, it\u2019s also a talent centre,\u201d Sinha said, noting that Indian teams are increasingly client-facing and central to innovation. \u201cMuch of the innovation\u2026 many of the algorithms programmes are developed in India.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trust, Transparency, and the Human-in-the-Loop<\/b><\/p>\n

Healthcare remains one of the most regulated industries in the world, making governance frameworks critical for AI deployment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is very little of autonomous bots that companies are deploying with customers or even with physicians,\u201d Sinha observed. \u201cIn almost every case, there is human checking of what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

While AI adoption is expanding, \u201cin a regulated industry, we can\u2019t take the chance of somebody dying from the recommendation,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I think that the trust is through a person right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

He pointed to the rise of OpenEvidence, widely used by physicians in the United States, as an example of structured AI operating within defined boundaries.<\/p>\n

Better Decisions\u2014Not More Technology\u2014Will Drive Healthcare\u2019s Next Leap<\/b><\/p>\n

Healthcare data volumes are expanding rapidly\u2014from consumer searches to physician-level queries and millions of annual sales interactions within a single large pharma company.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe value\u2026 is going to come from understanding patterns across similar physicians, similar decision makers, similar hospitals,\u201d Sinha explained. He argued that better information symmetry could reduce waste and improve alignment between products and patient needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree-year implementation cycles are no longer viable,\u201d Sinha said. \u201cTechnology is evolving faster than companies can deploy it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Platforms such as ZAIDYN, he added, allow organisations to \u201cbe up and running within weeks rather than years,\u201d enabling them to plug in evolving tools without rebuilding infrastructure each time technology advances.<\/p>\n

The Bottom Line<\/b><\/p>\n

Healthcare\u2019s next breakthrough, Sinha maintains, will not come from incremental technology adoption.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompetitive differentiation will come from superior decision intelligence rather than technology deployment alone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Technology may provide the tools, but the advantage will belong to organisations that transform data into faster, smarter, and more accountable decisions across the healthcare ecosystem.> <\/p>\n

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