Despite the benefits of moving to the cloud, migration can still be prohibitively time-consuming and costly, especially in a highly regulated industry like pharma. But that’s all starting to change, thanks to tools designed to automate and speed up the process. Here, Arjun Khanna, CTO at labelling and artwork management specialist Kallik explains how these tools could accelerate digital transformation strategies in pharma – enabling companies to get products to market faster, improve compliance and reduce recalls.
The idea that the pharma industry is a digital foot-dragger compared to other industries has been dissipating for some time now. Of course, caution is needed in this highly regulated industry – but the past few years, in particular, have brought significant advances in the application of cloud technology.
From academia and research to manufacturing and distribution, the cloud has paved the way for the development and delivery of innovative new treatments.
Without the cloud, it’s likely we wouldn’t have seen the Covid-19 vaccine rolled out at the speed, and on the scale that we did. Far from being behind the curve when it comes to technology, the industry giants had embarked on their cloud strategies a decade or more ago – so they already had proven solutions to support the vaccine programme.
Over the years, they’ve introduced a mix of off-the-shelf ‘software as a service’ (SaaS) solutions, and ones they’ve built in-house using the leading cloud platforms, Google Cloud, AWS (Amazon Web Services), and Microsoft Azure.
These platforms, and the solutions built on them, are continually improving their security, scalability and performance, enabling companies to drive innovation and tackle both long-standing inefficiencies and new challenges like the rise in counterfeit medicines.
Investment in cloud infrastructure means that pharma manufacturers can process and maintain data within a secure environment at scale and in near real-time, using Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), the Internet of Things (IoT), and blockchain. Every aspect of the drug lifecycle can be, or is being, transformed by smart technologies, which in turn promotes better health outcomes for patients, and improved performance for life sciences companies.
Now, we’re in a position to quantify the benefits of a cloud compared to on-prem which, according to one report 1 can be seen in four key areas: R&D, clinical development, commercialisation and manufacturing, and safety and compliance. They include a 31% uplift in revenue from new products; an 83% increase in AI/ML usage; and a 27% drop in unexpected manufacturing-related downtime.
Because of benefits like these, we’re seeing more companies press ahead with cloud migration, with the appointment 2 of chief digital and technology officers (CDTOs) to drive their strategy forward.
While it might feel less risky, even wise, to take a piecemeal approach to cloud migration, companies that have lacked the direction of a CDTO, until now, may find that key processes have been overlooked. As such, they remain largely manual and generally unfit for purpose in the modern world.
