Rapidly Evolving Technologies Improving Operational Efficiencies

By Dr.Subir Basak, President, Jubilant Drug Discovery & Development Services

Dr.Subir Basak, President, Jubilant Drug Discovery & Development Services

The growing market of pharmaceuticals in India has propelled it to become one of the major industries in the country. The Indian pharmaceutical industry is highly fragmented with about 24,000 players (330 in the organized sector). Globally, the Indian pharmaceuticals market (IPM) is ranked 3rd largest in terms of volume and the 10th largest in terms of value. The industry has been posting a double digit growth on account of several socio-economic factors, including increasing sales of generic medicines, continued growth in chronic therapies, and a greater penetration in rural markets. India accounts for over 10 per cent of the global pharmaceutical production, with over 60,000 generic brands across 60 therapeutic categories; it manufactures more than 400 different active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). As per industry estimates, the pharmaceutical sales in India is expected to rise by 14.4 per cent to $27 billion in 2016 from last year.

With rise in the number of outsourcing deals between domestic drug companies and pharmaceutical multinationals (MNCs), the demand for partnership between academia and industry for research drug development has come into mainstay. Today collaborations between industry and academia are promoted by open innovation programs, which have become a near-universal model for R&D.

Hurdles encountered Pharmaceutical

Companies, both domestic and international, face several major issues that include changing regulations, product life cycle management, patent protection, pre-clinical discovery and research and supply chain management. Also, the pharmaceutical output has remained stable over the past decade.

Poor scientific productivity and the rise in expectations of customers have compounded to become one of the top priority hurdles of the industry.

Jubilant offers customized innovative solutions across the drug discovery value chain, to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry. The discovery team focuses on early stage lead generation across various target classes. It also uses wide range of technologies, including High Throughput Screening, Molecular Modeling, and Medicinal Chemistry, Structural Biology and others, to identify novel starting points that are then selectively taken through the preclinical discovery process. The company provides flexibility through its business models so that it can cater to each client's requirements in the best possible manner.

Penetration and Evolution of Technology

In the past, the pharmaceutical sector has been sluggish in adopting new technologies when compared to other sectors like IT, software etc., but now the pharmaceutical sector is in tremendous pressure due to spiraling healthcare costs and demand for therapeutic needs of unmet clinical conditions. In order to adapt to these growing demand and address the issues that are emerging due to those, the sector is employing new technologies to complement its research efforts and also to reduce cost and time taken for the new drugs to hit the market.

Technology innovation has become the core requirement for any organization that is looking for effective time and cost management. The company has worked on streamlining the supply process and has created processes that enables our scientists to procure their reagents electronically with minimal or no paperwork. From traditional way of writing data with pen and paper, the company has undertaken various technology measures to digitize data with robust security controls. Thus allowing the organization to systematically maintain records and archive. Since, it is these information and records that become of vital importance during the time of inquiry or regulation inspection.

Also, the cloud computing technology has seen a rise in its popularity as it provides location and device independence. Thus allowing companies to share resources across large pools of users and enabling the scalability of services on a self-serve on real-time basis. The large amount of next generation sequencing data, the growing requirement for public– private partnerships (PPPs), and the need for integrating data sharing are just a few of the technology trends driving an increased interest in cloud computing by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Data security is the major concern for pharmaceutical companies to take up cloud computing and the company hopes to present solutions that will address these issues effectively and make cloud computing more accessible for pharmaceutical companies.

Rapidly evolving technologies are improving operational efficiencies and amplifying the performance of pharmaceutical and life sciences companies. These new and improved technologies jointly foster innovation through new ways of product development, data collection, regulatory reporting process, customer service and interaction, partnerships, thereby creating value and encouraging success.