Emerging trends of Personalisation in the Pharmaceutical Industry

The global pharmaceutical industry is likely to exceed $1.5 trillion by the end of 2023.

Major factors attributed to this large market size include growing disease prevalence, increasing affordability, changing consumer attitude, changing government policies with respect to insurance and reimbursements, and availability of appropriate treatment alternatives.

Demand for Personalised products is rapidly increasing, allowing organizations to find niche position and create a disruption in the otherwise established markets, serviced by large Pharma companies with scaled production, providing value products across the globe. Leveraging Hyper Personalisation using real time data to provide more personalised and targeted products, services or content to the consumer & opportunity to leverage these trends are clearly visible in the Pharma & Cosmetic industry

What has changed over the last few years?

· Social trends: The consumers are far more amenable to share their unique personal data through social media as well as through wearable devices. As an example - #WeAreNotWaiting is the rally cry of folks in the diabetes community who are taking matters into their own hands; they’re developing platforms and apps and cloud-based solutions, and reverse-engineering existing products when needed in order to help people with diabetes better utilize devices and health data for improved outcomes.

Many pharmaceutical companies have dedicated their process to the vision of right drug, right patient, right time, particularly in therapeutic areas such as oncology and neuroscience. The companies realize that this strategy provides the opportunity to achieve extensive clinical advances in specific patient populations compared to the exhaustive set of population.

· Technology trends: The use of AI and large data analytics is providing targeted consumer profiles, thus providing the potential to Hyper-personalise products or define niche new clusters and segments.

· Strategic business Models: Rapidly evolving models are redefining where and how value is created in niche consumer sub-segments especially where operating models leverage emerging trends. As new scientific evidence and interdependencies emerge, the customers are rapidly absorbing and adapting to the change. When it comes to health and wellness the customers are willing to pay a premium when they know that it is outcome based.

· Channel play is rapidly being redefined with ecommerce and last mile delivery becoming economically feasible. It is also being preferred, given that Virtual/Augmented Reality allows near real trials in some categories with online Chat-bots available for a prompt and accurate response to any queries. With the advent of next technologies in Refrigeration leveraging thermoelectric and magneto caloric cooling, it is not long before energy efficient, mini box-refrigerators become viable and sensitive vials and medicine can be safely door delivered under controlled condition.

·  Mass urban transport & Logistics: Linear flow from Suppliers, plants, distributors, retail, consumers is shifting to a dynamic, complex matrixed flow given the fact that most trucks are only partly loaded & also the fact that with IR tag and trace systems, what gets delivered where & when can be closely tracked. This is helping reduce transportation costs and in some cases supporting the sustainability drive as they help pick up primary, secondary reusable packs. 

The Industry sees intrinsic customer value being offered in unique offering at the time of consumption, enabled by the real time data.

A major influence of this supply chain evolution will be patient-centricity with virtual strategies. Virtual trials are often a key part of a patient-centric strategy and the potential benefits where a comprehensive strategy is implemented can be incredible. By leveraging state-of-the-art technologies and processes such as direct-to-patient logistics, wearables, mobile health technologies, big data and AI, clinical sites can mostly be eliminated from the supply chain and patients will become more engaged and active when participating in trials.

Large Pharma’s uses advanced analytical capabilities to better understand consumer segments and leverage audience insight to deliver an -engaging brand experience

One Oncology intervention Company, says if we can identify smaller appropriate audiences and engage these patients, the value can far exceed capturing a larger segment with a broader marketing approach.

All chronic conditions have high rates of patient noncompliance. It is commonly reported that patient compliance to therapy averages between 50% and 65%. Patients who do not adhere to treatment typically have additional healthcare issues, which leads to increased healthcare costs.

Pharma Companies need to orchestrate and customize complex solutions tailored to the individual user by fundamentally rethinking how best to serve their customers employing predictive analytics, adaptive business logic and responsive consumer connect that offers outcome based services to the consumer. Businesses must begin to think, act, and operate like cloud providers to serve users, with an offering that is dynamically configured around each individual or enterprise and their specific needs."

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will help to reshape the future of the pharmaceutical industry. Actually, these technologies have the highest scope to contribute in the future as pharmaceutical industry holds tera-bites of patient data. For example, rather than taking months to see the effect of a particular drug on thousands of people, it will take seconds to see the effect of a drugs on billions of simulations of the human body’s physiology from the past records of patients.

The significance of Big Data Analytics (BDA) is not new to the pharmaceutical industry, especially in the drug discovery process. The drug discovery, pharmaceutical companies are also using analytics solutions in other operational processes such as marketing analytics, pharmacovigilance, drug manufacturing, and targeted marketing of geographies.

BDA applications are being explored in R&D, & in other operational processes. In supply chain, it helps pharmaceutical companies diagnose issues in their logistics, supplier performance, procurement, delays in delivery, demand management, etc. Vendors are launching BDA solutions that focus on increasing supply chain productivity of pharmaceutical companies.

Furthermore, new branches of pharmacology are gaining importance in the market such as pharmacogenomics (the response of drugs to the genetic makeup of an individual) and pharmacokinetics (absorption, distribution, and exit mechanisms of a drug within the body). Consequently, big data vendors and pharmaceutical companies are working together to develop analytics solutions that can be used in the clinical research processes relating to different branches of pharmacology. Likewise, even bio-pharmaceuticals are using AI and cognitive computing applications to predict the effect of biological products (antitoxins, bacterial and viral vaccines etc.) on the human body.

In today’s environment, a company must decide if its purpose is to provide health or to provide medications, says Shideh Sedgh Bina, founding partner, Insigniam, and 2016 PharmaVOICE 100 honoree

New trials and tests related to Digestible IoT Devices - These tiny pills or gadgets combined with a sensor could track digestion and the absorption of drugs after swallowing them are showing promising trends.

Block chain application is being explored even for whole clinical trial consent, track and trace

Organs on Chips called -"HumMod” is one of the most advanced simulations in this respect. It provides a top-down model of human physiology from whole organs to individual molecules. It features more than 1,500 equations and 6,500 variables such as body fluids, hormones, circulation, electrolytes, metabolism, and skin temperature. “HumMod” aims to simulate how human physiology works, and claims to be the most sophisticated mathematical model of human physiology ever created.

Pharmacovigilance, the practice of studying, managing and helping prevent adverse effects from drugs, is being heavily impacted by technological developments. Data can be collected in more sophisticated ways than ever before, such as using mobile sensors to collect patients’ biometric data.

Examples of Industry Leveraging Technology

·Amgen has their new facility is one fifth the size of a traditional plant but maintains a comparable output. The plant of the future very well may be a fraction of that size, necessitating a fraction of utilities and resources.

·Aprecia Pharmaceuticals developed Zipdose, patented technology for 3D printing drugs to enable high-dose medications in a rapidly disintegrating form. Using this technology, they then produced Spritam, which treats Epilepsy. This was the world’s first 3D printed drug approved by the FDA. As this manufacturing method gains popularity, it will likely completely transform how the pharmaceutical industry operates, in terms of its supply chain.

Nanotechnology still seems like a vision of science fiction rather than a reality, but eventually, we could see microscopic robots being introduced into the body in order to deliver drugs, make repairs or monitor health

Leveraging new technologies, Personalizing customer care, greater focus on prevention, service/ benefit that is outcome based, rapid prototyping by leveraging AI are some of the visible trajectories for the Pharmaceutical Industry to create greater value & social impact.