Biopharma lags in harnessing digitalisation suggests report

Some 31 companies were interviewed and assessed in the period covering the Covid-19 pandemic, from late 2019 until early this year.

“Translating digitalisation into value for Pharma and Life Sciences manufacturing remains a key focus for many but the challenges of speed and efficiency need to be addressed with urgency,” advises the report.

And, as within several industrial sectors that have been speedier adopters, the authors warn that gaps will emerge quickly between those companies most able to digitalise and those which fail to do so.

Siemens’ Head of Pharmaceuticals Andrew Matthews noted that many pharma and life science were apparently unfamiliar with concepts such as digital twinning. These are already well entrenched in other industries, notably oil and gas – once regarded as a sector very traditional in its approach to innovation.

Said Matthews: “At a recent ISPE (International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology) event, it surprised me that only about a fifth of the audience had heard of a digital twin, which means many have likely never heard of Industry 4.0 or Pharma 4.0.”

However, with the recent pandemic highlighting the need to compress the drug discovery process, interest ias growing among those surveyed in the uses of Industry 4.0 technologies such as computational chemistry and data analysis to accelerate drug development.

And in addition to accumulation of data, a key concern is to make what is available more meaningful through the use of analytics and standardisation, integration and visibility throughout the industry. 

This in turn will enable faster and more effective regulation, suggests one respondent who predicted that off-site, remote inspections by regulators could soon become the norm. 

The report notes that a key driver for better technological adoption is the need to maintain the UK and Irish life science sectors’ strategic importance and value.

The UK market alone is expected to top £12 billion this year, at a time when global markets will average 10% growth rates. The combined UK and Irish market remains the top target for inward investment in Europe overall, adds the study.