Evolution of the Pharmaceutical Industry through Pandemic: An Analysis
Abstract:
The outrage after the Covid Pandemic has made many businesses and industries fall apart leaving a massive population jobless. Besides it, the IT industry the pharmaceutical industry uplifted it’s working during the phase. The industry on which millions of people’s health was dependent for the protection from the novel Corona Virus. The industry has seen quite a few twists and turns in the field of research during the pandemic. It’s just that the pandemic acted as a catalyst in the process of Research and Development in the field of pharmaceutical industry to contribute to the best performance and the best of its abilities to discover vaccines in order to pre-empt the virus. The whole crux of this article is to provide an overview of how pharmaceutical industry has made a drastic change after and during the pandemic.
Introduction
The havoc created by the pandemic has made the pharmaceutical industry prone to adopt technology in order to combat the situation. Various countries started tracking the covid patients by tracking them on various government driven apps like the Arogya Setu in India. The pandemic has made us all adopt the ‘new normal’ where social distancing, facemasks, sanitizing were some of the new norms which people adopted during that phase. It was a big challenge for the pharmaceutical industry to adopt to such change keeping in mind the health concern of the people.
Analysis
With the COVID outbreak the role of pharmaceutical industry has increased from a mere provider of medicinal products to performing various functions like creating working practices to health care professionals, developing emergency use medicines as per the treatment guidelines, to increase the supply chain ecosystem for timely delivery of medicines, creating a virtual platform so that medical assistance can be given remotely to patients, proper distribution of information regarding the spread and proper medication to be taken after getting affected from the virus, increase participation of people into human trials aiming at identifying, investigating and producing relevant medications as per national and international guidelines.[1] This is caused a major change in the function of the industry. In the USA it has been observed that tele-medical consultation has taken the lead and physical medical consultation has plummeted by a whopping 70-80%. It is predicted that this might lead to long term changes in the pharmaceutical world.[2]
The long-term impact that the pandemic has drawn on people both physically and mentally because the virus took a long time to heal. The research and development took place during the pandemic was kind of hit and trial method which the research scientists went through. No one knew that the people recovering from the virus will develop various other health issues like Black fungus, White fungus, loss of eyesight etc., post recovery from virus could be a long-drawn-out process and pharmaceutical industry had to run in its parallel. [3]
Many deals were made within the pharmaceutical industry like mergers and acquisitions, contract service agreements and licensing agreements etc., during the pandemic. These were mainly for the COVID vaccines and for its treatment3. Mergers and Acquisitions have been at the very core during the pandemic as they facilitate innovation, create an economy of scale and bring in portfolio realignment for creation of appropriate pharma products.[4] Between 2019-20 the number of deals in the pharma sector increased by 22% in India.[5]
The pandemic led to digital transformation in the health care as well as in the pharmaceutical industry. Artificial intelligence has been employed has been employed in the pharmaceutical industry. Innovative machine learning techniques and AI-powered solutions are being used by pharma corporations all over the globe to speed up the drug research procedure. Adoption of artificial intelligence can increase new drug and therapy rates of success, create more affordable therapies and solutions?and, as importantly, reduce operational costs. Robotics and algorithms have also been utilized to automate warehouses, autonomous vehicles, drone-delivered packages, and other tasks that are crucial for temperature-controlled pharmaceutical delivery networks. It has been employed for creating drugs for COVID treatment and prophylaxis.[6] Various techniques include drug identification, screening, prediction and forecast. Fig 1 shows application of AI in treatment of COVID.
Application of AI in COVID treatment
Another change that this crisis brought in was change as to the passage in which the medicines were being sold. Industry recognized the potential of e-Pharmacy in today’s world. With the boom in e-commerce, the method of drug distribution is also changing, instead of the conventional medical shop, people prefer online shopping of medical items due to illness and fear of infection. Due to the pandemic, there has been a significant rise in the positive sentiment towards e-pharmacy by the consumers and wish to continue with e-pharmacy even after the pandemic due to the ease in use. It is also predicted that e- pharmacy will increase by1.4 times of its pre-COVID-19 household estimates by FY 25. [7] In the present arena, pharma sales are affected by 5-15% by the e- Pharmacy model and change are on an upward trend.[8]
Conclusion:
The need for technological advancements in the pharmaceutical industry will help the Health Care professionals to serve better with the emerging needs of the people. It can be further said that the pharmaceutical industry has been through its adverse times when the supply chain and Health facilities in the field was adversely affected due to frequent lockdown and strict travel restrictions among countries. Besides, the adversities faced by Health Care Professionals during long working hours in Covid wards looking after the infected patience the industry managed to solve the mystery of Covid infections through its scientific study of drugs and medicines by coming up with vaccines.
It is high time that the field of medical science make constant progress in the field of research and development which will help the world to face massive deadly viruses like Covid-19. It is the time for pharmaceutical industries to buckle up and prepare for the worst. ?
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[1] Samad Hamed Almurisi, Doaa Al Khalidi et AL ; Impact of Covid 19 Pandemic Crisis on the Health system and Pharmaceutical Industry; Volume 10Issue 2, 2021,2298- 2308, 16-11-2020
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Chaitanya-Chilakamarry/publication/346719081_Impact_of_COVID_19_Pandemic_Crisis_on_the_Health_System_and_Pharmaceutical_Industry/links/603e28a9a6fdcc9c780874c8/Impact-of-COVID-19-Pandemic-Crisis-on-the-Health-System-and-Pharmaceutical-Industry.pdf
[2] Nayyereh Ayati, Parisa Saiyarsarai & Shekoufeh Nikfar, Short and long term impacts of COVID-19 on the pharmaceutical sector, 28 DARU Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences 799 (2020).
[3] Available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8427008/
[4] Available at https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/m-and-a/our-insights/a-new-prescription-for-m-and-a-in-pharma
[5]Available at ?https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/comment/indian-pharma-deals-landscape-covid-19/
[6] Muzammil Khana Muhammad, Taqi Mehran et al. Expert Systems with Applications Volume 185, 15 December 2021, 115695. Applications of artificial intelligence in COVID-19 pandemic: A comprehensive review
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[8] Singh H, Majumdar A et al. Journal of Drug Delivery & Therapeutics. 2020; 10(3-s):335-340. E-Pharmacy Impacts on Society and Pharma Sector in Economical Pandemic Situation: A Review.