‘Most Admired’ for our passion in driving healthcare forward

For the seventh consecutive year, IQVIA was named to FORTUNE’s list of “World’s Most Admired Companies” and once again, earned the first-place ranking in our industry for innovation, people management, and quality of products and services, among other attributes.

We recently sat down with IQVIA’s Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, Trudy Stein, who shared what the award means to IQVIA and gave an inside look into what it’s like to work here – everything from our people to what drives us.

1. What does it mean to be named to FORTUNE magazine’s “World’s Most Admired Companies” list and ranked number one in the Healthcare: Pharmacy and Other Services category?

For IQVIA, this recognition reflects how passionate our people are about powering smarter healthcare for everyone, everywhere, and how our company culture encourages that passion. We are tackling some of the most complex health challenges in the world. Because of this, each IQVIAN comes to work motivated by something bigger than themselves. Being recognized for that passion is an indication that others also see the importance of working to make a difference in the world.

For example, clinical trials give patients access to cutting-edge therapies, but for those who don’t live near a clinical trial site, it can be impossible to participate. We help solve this problem by using technology to bring the trial to the patient. Instead of having to travel long distances, a patient might be able to complete some or all trial activities from their home or wherever they receive healthcare locally. These types of clinical trials also make it easier for diverse patient populations to participate, so the trial better represents the variety of patients who may one day take the medicine.

2. FORTUNE’s list places IQVIA alongside Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and other big-name organizations with strong reputations. What makes IQVIA stand out?

We innovate together. IQVIA is incredibly unique in our ability to intelligently connect data, broad and deep expertise, analytics, and research in the life sciences sector. We call this intersection of insights “IQVIA Connected Intelligence™,” and it’s essential because while the digital age has resulted in vast repositories of knowledge, we’re at the point where we can’t solve the most complex problems unless we can make connections across systems, disciplines, and stakeholders. More than 10,000 customers worldwide trust us to help them use those insights and connections to accelerate the development of innovative treatments, get treatments to patients, and improve their health outcomes.

As an example, one of our healthcare-grade AI solutions won an award recently for the groundbreaking approach it offers clinicians in treating patients with health risks like living environment, work conditions, and food insecurity. These are all risks that are historically difficult to pull from patient records. One emergency department using the technology has been able to screen 56% more at-risk patients based on these factors than previous best practice. By enabling social workers and other relevant practitioners to care for these patients proactively, the technology can help emergency departments run more effectively.

We help our people take the next step in their careers, whatever that step may be. Whether you want to expand your skill set in your current role, develop skills to take on a new role, or become a manager, we have many avenues to help you achieve your goal. At IQVIA, this means you may enroll in our AI-driven talent marketplace to match to apprenticeship-style projects, mentoring opportunities or open global roles and also pursue one of our many development programs.

Our talent marketplace helps match people to opportunities across the company based on their aspirations and aligned to the skills IQVIA needs to deliver on its mission. This is one of the ways we have driven our internal hiring rate from 27% in 2021 to 30% in 2023 and maintained employee engagement favorability of over 80%. For example, after joining our talent marketplace and completing his profile highlighting his current skills and aspirations, one of our Software Engineer’s profile was noticed by a hiring manager looking to fill a critical role on their team. The talent marketplace helped the hiring manager identify a pool of talent and ultimately hire someone with the right skills internally who was aspiring to a new role.

Short-term initiatives are also posted on the platform to offer employees the chance to explore and practice new skills or use existing skills in new ways. One of our AI Leads in the U.K. posted an opportunity to work with him on a quantum machine learning proof of concept related to improving medical diagnoses. Two machine learning engineers – one in Germany and one in the U.S. – saw his post, wanted that experience, and signed onto the project to help tackle this challenging problem for one of our clients.

We strive to bring out the best in each other. There’s a real ‘can-do’ spirit across IQVIA, where you can call just about anyone if you need a thought partner, and they will help you. Our AI for Healthcare & MedTech group recently needed expert communicators to help them create materials for patients to explain a new algorithm we are testing to identify those at risk for developing heart failure. The group quickly ended up with 15 volunteers from different departments, including marketers, statisticians, clinicians and nurses, and graphic designers.

All these aspects of our work and our culture support our ability to bring talented people into our organization. Great people want to work here because we’re creating a place where extraordinary people can come together to achieve extraordinary things.

3. What would you say to someone considering a career at IQVIA?

It’s not just possible to have multiple careers here – we’re designed that way. We make a variety of learning opportunities available to all employees, many of which focus on business-specific topics, such as client-focused training, technology, analytics, clinical and therapy areas and more. And our people take advantage of those opportunities to build new skills – our internal Talent and Learning hub had over 1 million visits in 2023.

IQVIANs leverage these tangible development opportunities at work and can chart their own career paths. One of the big jumps I’ve seen lately is IQVIA employees in clinical research roles wanting to utilize their life sciences backgrounds in a different space – developing technologies that improve clinical trials. They use our programs to build tech skills they need, and then they move into our IT areas where they use both skill sets.

People who come to IQVIA have the tools, resources, and reach to make a meaningful and tangible impact on patients and healthcare outcomes. If you want to grow while working to create a healthier world, and you’re passionate, innovative, and collaborative, then you might be ready to become an IQVIAN.

1. Are you interested in joining a world-class organization? Explore available career opportunities now.