Pharmaceutical Industry, All business industries are affected by the rapid technology changes happening. These trends and innovations change how companies operate. Organizations want to stay competitive, and when the whole industry starts using some new solutions, they have to follow or fall behind.
Even though the pharmaceutical industry was traditionally a bit slower in adopting innovative solutions, it’s currently going through a massive change. Successful examples of other sectors and tangible results have led to a paradigm shift in pharma.
In this post, we will talk about some of the latest tech solutions within the pharmaceutical industry and how they can help.
1. Wearable tech (IoT)
Wearable tech doesn’t only help pharma companies to sell, market, and manufacture drugs. Patients can also make important decisions and manage their conditions with these technologies. There are many devices for remote monitoring solutions that can track various important metrics with different kinds of patients.
For example, patients who have diabetes can easily track blood pressure and glucose levels. These devices allow patients to keep track of important metrics that could impact their health. They can react on time, take medications, or contact their doctors with this kind of information.
IoT connectivity solutions are helping create a network through which doctors can monitor their patients’ conditions. Even though connectivity is still not perfect, chances are these challenges will be solved really soon.
2. Added flexibility to the production process
The pharmaceutical industry primarily focuses on delivering new drugs and manufacturing them. In other words, this is the core of their business, and companies are looking for new ways to improve this process.
Pharma industry market dynamics are changing, and manufacturing needs to adjust to these changes. Some companies are implementing small batches of precision production. On the other hand, there’s a growth of single-use bioreactors that increase productivity and reduce downtime. They remove many complex steps like validation and cleaning.
Certain production lines are upgrading their existing technologies by using reciprocating compressor systems to provide a sterile environment and increase production speeds.
3. Augmented reality and virtual reality
AR and VR are already used in many different spheres of the healthcare industry, including physical therapy, diagnosis, and education. Pharmacy and medical students can attend to various processes virtually in real-time to observe different methods, surgeries, and procedures.
Instructors can make great use of augmented reality and virtual reality for creating simulations through which students can learn how to do a procedure in practice. For example, instead of using cadavers or testing compounds with real ingredients, they can go through VR scenarios to learn about different outcomes.
You can use various VR collaboration tools for visualizing protein, molecules, and atoms. Professionals can design new proteins, change structures, and use these tools to collaborate globally within a virtual environment.
4. Real-world data and real-world analytics
RWD and RWA are among the latest pharma tech trends that significantly impact decision-making. For example, different administrations or government organizations can use real-world data and analytics combined with AI to see if a product is safe and recognize any adverse effects before implementing the right regulatory policies.
Healthcare professionals regularly use these technologies to create guidelines for medical tools used in clinical practices and support different coverage decisions. Manufacturers use both RWD and REW to support their clinical trial systems, including simple trials and pragmatic clinical trials.
The analytical capabilities of these solutions allow the healthcare community to process large volumes of data and use the insights to improve approval and development processes.
5. Blockchain in the pharmaceutical industry
The pharmaceutical industry is one of the first sectors to adopt blockchain technology. It’s used across all stages of drug distribution and production. Companies in the pharmaceutical industry need to be very careful about their data and ensure it’s protected.
Blockchain provides complete safety, anonymity, and traceability. At the same time, you can use blockchain to detect counterfeit drugs that enter the supply chain and prevent revenue loss. It’s a great tracking option that increases transparency while providing digitalization.
Supply chains are an essential part of pharma, especially during the COVID-19 era when these systems were disrupted.
Conclusion
As you might notice, most of these new tech solutions are digital. One of the primary reasons for this is the global pandemic that made large companies realize just how valuable digital technologies can be for the future. This trend of digitalization is going to continue even after the pandemic.