Polaris
Extensive Reporting and Mitigating Compliance Risks

Today, across industries there is a shift in risk management activities and focus from compliance and cost optimization to competitive differentiation. Commercial compliance risk is growing in the life sciences industry and manufacturers are seeking opportunities to enhance their organization’s risk management. On the other hand, countries around the world are tightening their legislations, which curtail the interactions for the pharmaceutical, and life science manufacturers with the HCPs (Healthcare Professional) and Health Care Organizations. As a result, life sciences companies are forced to be accountable to the government. Enterprise risk management solutions are becoming prevalent and Polaris, a company from New York, NY and Amsterdam, The Netherlands, is focused on delivering compliance consulting and technology solutions for life science companies providing insights and defining technology standards through innovation.

HIP (Healthcare Professional Interaction Portal) is one of Polaris’ exclusive tools which allow life sciences companies to globally integrate and automate processes for managing HCP engagements and payments in a single, web-based platform. “It automates the entire process of identifying, contracting and then reporting on any type of transfer value between an HCP/O and pharmaceutical companies,” says Marc Eigner, Senior Partner and Co-Founder, Polaris. “HIP enables reviewing and assessing the risk of any type of interaction with a physician, before any collaboration takes place, including automating background screening and Fair Market Value (FMV) processes,” he adds. HIP provides easy access to vendor record, purchase order, and invoicing data. “The data can be leveraged across the organization for enhanced visibility,” says Eigner.

To support the HIP tool, Polaris also offers the STAR (Spend Tracking Analytics and Reporting) system which permits the pharmaceutical companies to meet all global aggregate spend and transparency requirements. Polaris has recently launched a new product called the ‘Third Party Due Diligence Portal’ which allows companies to do a background screening and other types of due diligence on third party that they are engaging with.

“It is one of the key products in the space and was a result of clients’ requests to expand beyond our traditional offering,” remarks Eigner.

Polaris sets itself apart as an exclusive life sciences compliance consulting service provider in the ERM space. The company has a staff of compliance attorneys that track various laws and also a team of deep subject matter experts that follow all the regulations.

Working with the motto ‘accountability, no matter what’, Polaris remains committed to its clients to ensure that their projects are successful regardless of the roadblocks. Polaris follows a client focused culture with the key objectives being quality, customer satisfaction and OTOBOS (on-time/on-budget/ on-schedule). Recently, Polaris helped a medical device establishment that was spinning off from one of the top five pharmaceutical companies. The client needed risk management compliance solutions to align both their processes and technology in place within three to six months across the globe. Polaris worked with them and helped them to put their processes and SOPs in place immediately. The result was that the client had one of the only departments to meet their transition timelines and lower risks. They were able to successfully implement a diverse solution across multiple countries.

The HIP tool allows life science companies to globally integrate and automate processes for managing HCP contracts and payments in a single, web-based platform

Moving forward, Polaris is focused on developing solutions to effectively respond to the different needs of clients. The company is working on a project called “Project Evolution” which is an internal setup to ensure that the company’s solutions are more configurable and easier to implement and at lower cost. The company also has plans to set up offices in Asia and Latin America.