Ketan Patel discusses his role as Product Director, the impact of technology and what the future of pharmaceutical data looks like.
Ketan joined Clarivate eight months ago to head up the Clinical, Regulatory and Competitive Intelligence product development team for Cortellis, a Clarivate Analytics solution. He has fifteen years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry having begun his career in early discovery research for Eli Lilly and Company before moving to a more translational research role at Pfizer. Most recently, before joining Clarivate, Ketan worked for AstraZeneca in the health informatics domain. He has also worked in the technology space for the likes of Oracle. In this blog he talks about his job, the product development landscape, and why he loves working for an innovative company like Clarivate.
The perfect fit
With my background in both pharmaceutical and technology, when the role at Clarivate came up, it was the perfect fit. More than that, I knew the company and its reputation. I’d also been using a number of Cortellis products in previous roles, so as a long-time user, I was a massive fan of the data the company has.
After being here for six months I can say that it’s the people that make it such a great place to work. I already knew some of the people coming in, having worked with them in some capacity before. The passion, knowledge and energy of the people who work in the product and technology teams is amazing.
No typical day
Based in London, I’m responsible for a team of product managers spread across the United Kingdom, France and the United States. I enjoy the variety in my job because there’s no such thing as a typical day. I could do any number of things; from working with the marketing team on a launch and finalizing our go-to-market messaging; to talking to the technology team about a new product we’re developing and ensuring the features are aligned to what our customers need; and then working with sales on the current pipeline, account planning and our technology roadmap.
“The passion, knowledge and energy of the people who work in the product and technology teams is amazing.”
An exciting time
Competition in the competitive intelligence space is intense, which is why we are always pushing boundaries and making sure our customers are getting the best from us.
One of our recent developments is incorporating more artificial intelligence and machine learning into our products. This allows us predictive analytics capabilities, specifically when it comes to the drug timeline and success rate for any drug in the pipeline. We can give our customers a timeline estimate with confidence about when that drug is going to come to market. In essence, we take into account 15 years of historical data that’s finely curated and mix that with AI and statistical learning.
“Competition in the competitive intelligence space is intense, which is why we are always pushing boundaries and making sure our customers are getting the best from us.”
The model is rebuilt every day, which means we incorporate the latest news and pipeline information so that the data is always up to date. We can therefore better serve our customers and elevate ourselves above the competition.
The future
We’re also refreshing the user experience for our products. We’ve already completed this for our regulatory product, and then next year we’re rolling it out across all Cortellis Clinical, Regulatory and Competitive Intelligence products. This essentially means we’re modernizing the interface and making it easier to use with better search functionality. Not only can our customers work more efficiently, but they can also develop insights from the data because we’re adding more built-in charts and visual analytics.
Next year we’ll be expanding our analytics capabilities to two other areas of the business. The first one is around bringing intelligence to drug deals, and the other is a new product in the clinical trials area to help customers with more efficient site and country selection during clinical trials.
We’re always thinking about the next leap forward, which makes it an exciting place to work.
Career advice
If you’re looking to join Clarivate there are two characteristics that you’ll need. The first is boundless enthusiasm for your area of specialization, whether that’s life sciences, patents or publishing. The second is intellectual curiosity. If you’re not content to just follow other people and what’s been done before, but want to find a new path forward and solve real problems in creative ways, then Clarivate is the place for you.
To find out more about working with Cortellis and other Clarivate brands, visit: careers.clarivate.com.
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