5 Key Trends You Need to Keep an Eye on in the Pharma Industry: Blueprint for 2021

Trust, Innovation, Precision, and Speed – the 4 pillars of success in the pharma industry in 2021.

Understanding the key trends which will accelerate change within these 4 pillars is essential. This is because companies can then integrate them into their framework. So, what exactly are these trends?  

“If you make a sale, you can make a living. If you make an investment of time and good service in a customer, you can make a fortune.” – Jim Rohn 

This is the ultimate mantra for the pharma industry. The most important trend is the prioritization of clients and their needs. Customers now actively scrutinize pharma products, which heavily influences consumer behaviour. Here are some ways to enhance customer experience:

Customer Surveys and Marketing Strategies

Making customers feel heard is the most effective way to increase their loyalty. Therefore, the industry should make use of patient surveys. They help companies collect customer feedback to understand their perceptions toward an organization. Moreover, this helps to analyze consumer behaviour patterns and develop informed marketing strategies.  

Precision Medication in the Pharma Industry

Precision medicine provides customized treatment plans for clients. This is based on their individual “variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle”. It reduces the expense wasted in delayed treatment. As a result, precision medication facilitates faster and efficient diagnosis.

The revolution of 1s and 0s is taking over the pharma industry. Here are the key trends where healthcare and the digital world are converging:    

Virtual Pharmacies

Online websites allow customers to purchase medication quickly, privately, conveniently, and cost-effectively. Purchase histories are stored on websites. This helps buyers keep track of their medication. Furthermore, conversation chatbots facilitate a personalized customer experience.

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and Digital Therapeutics (DTx)

EHRs are holistic digital records of patients’ latest medical records. They are accessible by any specialist within the pharma industry, which facilitates easy communication between them and clients. On the other hand, DTx is an evidence-based intervention strategy that offers cost-effective patient care. When used in conjunction with pharma products, they are a formidable force for promoting digital operations.

Data Integration and Dashboards

Dashboards are business analytic tools that provide a real-time and accurate visual representation of company information. Graphs and charts facilitate easy understanding and faster decision-making. Hence, they guarantee higher efficiency in company performance.

AI provides the pharma industry with stability, precision, and speed in areas where human errors are likely to occur.

Predictive Modelling in the Pharma Industry

The coronavirus pandemic has shifted the pharma perspective from treatment to prevention. AI makes it possible to identify pandemic patterns and speed up the production of vaccines. It provides limitless benefits in the prediction of a patient’s prognosis, and possible reactions to interventions.

Developing New Drugs in the Pharma Industry

AI contributes to R&D by providing new data quickly. This includes insight into the identification of which compounds “have similar effects together”, predicting the reactivity of untested compounds, etc. Machine-learning algorithms enable the identification of a single pattern from a sea of complex data – saving lakhs of rupees spent on clinical drug trials.

Two of the leading concerns in the pharmaceutical industry is animal and/or human testing and disease elimination. We now have solutions for both.

In Silico Clinical Trials

Meet the latest poster child of FDA approval in pharma. In silico clinical trials are individualized computer simulations used for drug-testing and clinical trials. They eliminate the need for animal and/or human testing, and offer multiple benefits to the pharma industry. Time, money, and effort that were previously required for approvals from regulatory bodies behind just one drug, is now redundant.

Gene and Cell Therapies in the Pharma Industry

Instead of simply managing diseases, these therapies aim to eliminate them. Their ability to transfer genetic material and cells with the relevant function into the patient ensures a significant contribution to the development of personalized medicine.  

Operational excellence is the blueprint of pharma success. By using a variety of tools, it determines success in sales, customer satisfaction, brand image, and culture.  

Reign of Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, Kaizen in the Pharma Industry

These are the pillars of operational excellence. Lean helps with eliminating waste products from manufacturing operations. This ensures cost-effectiveness and minimal carbon footprint, which is extremely important due to today’s global focus on environmental sustainability. Six Sigma comprises statistical tools which link customer satisfaction and product quality. Kaizen (continuous improvement) focuses on bettering the quality of each unit of a company.

Transforming Organizational Culture and Rebuilding the Reputation of the Pharma Industry 

Pharma relies heavily on customer trust and loyalty – hence, reputation is everything. With the current lack of public disclosure of R&D findings, the credibility of drugs is scrutinized ruthlessly. To restore public trust, tailored reputations based on company culture is needed. A culture that breeds trust, employee engagement, and growth opportunities are likely to attract customer loyalty, as a company’s treatment of their employees reflects the way they treat their customers. 

Using these key trends, the new decade has taught the pharmaceutical industry to prepare for the worst. Hence, the first step to gearing up and staying one step ahead of the market is by integrating these trends into the company framework.  

Customer trust, digitization, and AI are the only way forward