Role of Technology In Pharma Supply Chain
By: Karen George
Tags: Supply Chain, Artificial Intelligence, Pharmaceutical

Source: Healthcare Business Review

As the current pharma supply chain is challenged by the lack of visibility and a number of new compliance regulations, most companies seek enhanced traceability. Pharmaceutical companies must adopt tracking technology to ensure product integrity and achieve global compliance.

Drug counterfeiting is a well-known and documented problem affecting human lives, but also the pharmaceutical industry reputation and ROIs. Within the United States, the FDA has enforced and implemented the Drug Supply Chain Security Act to protect consumers against counterfeit drugs. Act to protect consumers against falsified medicinal products. The Global Traceability Standard for Healthcare (GTSH) defines international process standard, explains and sets minimum requirements for all stakeholders in the healthcare supply chain. However, full implementation as a cohesive solution of global traceability standards is still in progress. Blockchain can be a comprehensive, all-inclusive solution which saves lives and dollars seamlessly in the future.

Critical support for combating counterfeit medicines and vaccines are substantial investments. Indeed, in the folding carton sector, anti-counterfeiting and safety procedures will continue to play a major role. The traceability solutions are one of the four biggest technological developments set to transform the market by 2022, according to the report by the design office of Smithers Pira titled “The Future of Folding Cartons to 2022.”

Indeed, when a drug package can be identified, the risk of receiving a fake product is reduced drastically. Increasing traceability procedures should help a huge worldwide counterfeiting industry, estimated at more than $200 billion worldwide in 2017 by the World Economic Forum.

In the pharmaceutical industry, serialization should help to monitor the supply chain and fight against the spread of fraudulent drugs and vaccines. The process can also bring additional benefits, including a more precise view of inventories with a better history of the origin and quality of the goods purchased. These advantages may also apply to other sectors facing counterfeiting hazards.

Serialization is a chance to modernize current traceability systems. This win-win model would significantly enhance action against parallel markets by controlling the supply chain and applying best practices driven by data. To ensure compliance with customer requirements and eliminate fake products from the global market, the pharmaceutical supply chain should be transformed with the largest track-and-trace network.

Role of AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has proved itself as a game-changing technology, for every industry, and not just pharmaceuticals. In the past few years, people have witnessed the potential of AI, which can benefit the healthcare industry. AI is reinterpreting how scientists developed new drugs and discovered cures, along with how they diagnosed, and how drug adherence was dealt with.

Nevertheless, AI in the pharma supply chain has mainly been ignored in spite of having enormous technological and commercial opportunities in the industry. The time has come to make more investments in AI solutions, primarily targeting the established challenges with the pharma supply chain.

Big pharma is aware of the technological arms race carried out in the worldwide healthcare industry. Recently, people have witnessed an acquisition spree with a few large pharmaceutical companies grabbing biotech start-ups, devoting in state-of-the-art AI solutions, and hiring domestic data scientists to perform together with scientists. Moreover, technology in the pharma supply chain that links the lab to the market is holding up. With the globalization of the pharma industry and the demand growing for new product types, supply chains should also turn smarter.

An ideal supply chain for today and tomorrow is considered as one of the most reactive ones, but proactive as well.

It has the potential to anticipate, as well as accommodate the present and future trends, steering the forces and challenges. Multiple stress factors force the pharma industry to settle in a while developing new and quality medicines at a very affordable price. Numerous stress factors are increasing each year and adding up to the present, the real challenge, especially for the supply chain management.

When it comes to ecological pressures, regulators are forcing stricter environmental controls throughout the design, manufacture, and transportation of the pharma products to help limit the carbon emissions, as well as lessen plastic and water wastes. Multifaceted biologic drugs and gene therapies are growing increasingly famous, but also release enormous challenges for manufacturing and distribution networks, because of their sensitivity and mini life-cycle.

Besides, populations all around the world are growing old, along with the occurrence of associated chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, and dementia. The criminal marketplace that sells falsified medicine is now worth more than $200 billion each year, making the safety of medicine quality a priority, including the progress of tamper-proof packaging technologies.

News source: The Increasing Need For Traceability In Pharma Supply Chain