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Pharma’s digital dilemma: Finding the balance between speed, scale, and experience

What’s holding pharma back from true digital transformation? At NEXT Pharma 2025, Our CEO Rob Verheul and Roeland van der Heiden (AstraZeneca) argued it starts with design systems. This quick article distills their session into key insights on how shared frameworks are helping pharma scale smarter, launch faster, and deliver experiences HCPs actually want to return to.

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by Graphite Digital
  • Design Systems
  • Design
  • Pharmaceutical
  • Customer Experience
  • User Experience

Pharma’s digital ambitions are bold, but the execution? Often fragmented, slow, and inconsistent.

Websites multiply. Content gets buried. Brand experiences break down before they even begin.

The problem isn’t just the volume. It’s the lack of shared structure underneath.

The real cost of inconsistency

As Rob Verheul put it at a recent industry talk, “You’ve got 35 products, 35 agencies, and 35 versions of a button doing the same job.”

It’s an insight that cuts to the heart of the issue: pharma is burning time, budget, and creative energy reinventing the basics.

But what if there was a better way to scale without starting from scratch every time?

Design systems: Built for scale, not sameness

That’s where design systems come in. Not as a set of templates, but as a flexible foundation for consistent, high-quality digital experiences.

At AstraZeneca, they’ve become central to OneAZ—a strategic programme reshaping how the organisation delivers digital across markets.

Design systems allow global teams to standardise what matters, while giving local teams the creative freedom they need to engage their audiences

The impact so far

For Roeland van der Heiden, the results for AstraZeneca speak for themselves:

  1. 1 Web launches cut from 3 months to 3 weeks
  2. 2 Development effort reduced by up to 90%
  3. 3 Dramatic improvements in accessibility and UX consistency

But perhaps most importantly, they’re restoring trust in digital.

Consistency breeds confidence

For healthcare professionals, that means intuitive, seamless journeys.

For brand teams, it means more time focused on content and outcomes—not on buttons and page templates.

“We’re not just making things look the same,” Rob said. “We’re making them feel the same. That’s what builds recognition, trust, and return visits.”

And in a world where return visits are everything, that consistency is a competitive advantage.

Invest in the invisible

The lesson? Design systems might not be flashy. But they’re the backbone of scalable, customer-first digital engagement.

Done right, they don’t just save money. They unlock creativity, accelerate launches, and give pharma brands the foundation to truly transform.

And that kind of transformation doesn’t happen by accident.

It happens by design.

Learn more about design systems