Jim and Sudhakar discuss some of the complex challenges manufacturers face as they deal with outdated data systems, information silos, misapplied discounts, and growing cyber security threats. They argue that these challenges will lead to lost revenue, third-party security breaches, and diminished patient care.
To learn more, register for Kalderos’ April 23, 2025 webinar: The Hidden Costs of Data Silos: Why Data Security & Architecture are Critical.
Read on for Jim and Sudhakar’s insights.
The Hidden Costs of Data Silos: How Pharma Manufacturers Can Stop Revenue Leaks and Strengthen Security
By Jim Hundemer: Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and Sudhakar Velamoor: Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Kalderos
Pharmaceutical manufacturers face a complex and rapidly evolving landscape, where data silos often obscure visibility into the full product lifecycle. This lack of transparency can lead to significant challenges such as revenue leakages and duplicate discounts. The steady increase in cyber threats allows for more vulnerable parts of the data silos to be exposed. The lack of centralized information and limited visibility across the pharmaceutical pipeline—from product shipment to medication dispensing, and even drug discounts or rebates—prevents manufacturers from making fully informed business decisions.
Data Silos Hiding Revenue Leakages
One significant impact of fragmented data is revenue leakage. Misapplied drug discounts contribute to the gross-to-net bubble - the growing gap between the gross sales of brand-name pharmaceuticals and the net revenue that manufacturers receive after discounts and rebates. It is estimated that a majority of the $356 billion total gross-to-net (GTN) reductions for these products come from rebates paid to third-party payers and the 340B Drug Pricing Program.
These misapplied discounts are a major contributor to revenue leakage, putting financial pressure on manufacturers and making it more difficult to maintain lower prices. Information silos across different departments hinder visibility and alignment on business operations. As a result, key decisions are often made at the departmental level, which can conflict with other areas of the business, allowing crucial information to fall through the cracks. To address this, organizations should elevate decision-making to a company-wide level, fostering transparency and alignment to prevent conflicting priorities and revenue leakage.
Manufacturers’ data is often distributed to teams based on centralized requests, resulting in a fragmented view. Gaining a unified, organization-wide perspective—rather than receiving isolated data from specific workflows or systems—enhances decision-making and streamlines processes.
An ideal data architecture for manufacturers would embed this level of visibility into daily operations. Kalderos brings internal drug manufacturer teams together by providing a comprehensive data view to inform business strategies. It also helps manufacturers understand how their data fits within the broader market.
Having a Sustainable and Secure Data Architecture Internally and Externally is Vital
As healthcare and pharma companies increasingly expand their vendor network to deal with crucial business operations like data management, they also increase their exposure to security risks and vulnerabilities. In a 2024 report, SecurityScorecard found that the healthcare industry had the highest volume of third-party breaches, with 35% of all reported healthcare data breaches occurring at third-party vendors. Manufacturers must take the necessary steps to evaluate their security and technology architecture across the entire attack surface, including vendors and partners.
Manufacturers and their teams should highly scrutinize their data security, certifications, and the connectivity between the company and its internal and external systems. Healthcare is a highly sensitive environment, and when payments are involved, the need for stringent security measures becomes even greater.
At a minimum, organizations should adhere to SOC 1 & 2 standards, which provides a comprehensive framework for managing risk and ensuring compliance across the healthcare ecosystem. Other recommended steps include implementing cloud infrastructure and code vulnerability detection services container scanning, secure coding practices, and regular DevSecOps meetings can be implemented to proactively identify and mitigate vulnerabilities before software releases.
At Kalderos, cybersecurity measures are multifaceted and ongoing, with seasoned information security experts evaluating systems internally and externally for efficiency and safety. We place significant importance on monitoring systems, both our own and our partners, to ensure that end users can find what they need while not compromising data.
We continually evolve our measures to keep up with advancing technology. Manufacturers must evaluate their external partnerships with the same high standards, ensuring that their testing covers not only security but also scalability and support to safeguard against cyberattacks.
Scalable and secure technology architecture is foundational to a safe and frictionless customer experience, enhancing manufacturers' workflows and speeding up decision-making through insights. Security is not an add-on; it must be embedded in the organizational culture. This ensures a proactive focus on customer data safety, compliance, auditability, and end-to-end insights across all manufacturer workflows. Configurable policies should be in place to maintain system integrity while adapting to evolving security and regulatory requirements.
In short, data silos, outdated technology, and broken infrastructure have led to program dysfunction and eroded trust among stakeholders. Navigating these technology challenges consumes valuable time and financial resources that should be directed toward patient care. By implementing a secure and modern technology architecture, we can ensure that more attention and resources are focused on what matters most—the patients.
To hear from industry experts on how pharma can address these underlying issues impacting manufacturing revenue streams, industry alignment, and patient outcomes—and why security and technology architecture are vital and should be prioritized when evaluating systems—register for our April 23, 2025 webinar: The Hidden Costs of Data Silos: Why Data Security & Architecture are Critical.
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