The pharma industry gradually acknowledges the importance of digital health. However, some communities embrace it not enough yet. For doing so, it is essential to monitor trends carefully that will change the industry in near future. By implementing disruptive technology like 3D printed drugs, artificial intelligence guided therapies and preventive medicine while working with regulatory agencies to make all this safe for patients, pharmaceutical industries can benefit from this digital revolution.

To start with, one trend that most of the people might have already heard about it personalised healthcare. As patients take their health in their own hands with help of digital health, they should be treated more as well-informed partners by hospitals and pharma industries. By putting the patient’s needs as a priority and closely involve them in the development of new products, industries can ensure to create a healthcare system that is futuristic even decades after the first plans were drawn.

Moreover, pharma companies all over the world realise that simply producing drug after drug is not sufficient value proposition: include digital health is now inevitable. They will have to go beyond the physical appearance and offer a complete package, called “around the pill” digital offerings. We are talking about digital health apps or services that can be prescribed by a medical doctor or bundled with a drug.

We could even receive a follow up message after taking a pill, thanks to digestible sensors that track the absorption of drugs after swallowing them. Such thing is already existing in Japan with a type of drug against mental illness to measure adherence in the treatment of patients with schizophrenia, for example. But before actually taking a drug: what if we could test them on virtual organisms? Scientists are progressively planning to leave drugs testing on humans and animals behind and create simulated organisms that reproduce perfectly the human body characteristics, allowing much quicker clinical trials.

In addition to those future changes, artificial intelligence is something that will get adapted in almost every industry, also pharma. Medical inputs driven by artificial intelligence using the power of supercomputers are changing everyday medicine. Cognitive computers, such as IBM Watson, have been used in many ways to analyse big data, not only in genomic research but also in biotechnology.

This will also shape the way new drugs are found and developed. It might lead to the end of human experimentation through detailed simulation of human physiology. We can see that the future holds a lot of inspiring and fascinating trends and opportunities and digitalisation will have an increasing impact on the healthcare industry.

References:

• Pwc Global. Pharma 2020: Marketing the Future: Available on: https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/industries/pharmaceuticals-life-sciences/publications/pharma-2020/pharma-2020-marketing-the-future-which-path-will-you-take.html
• TMF. 6 Suprising Trends Shaping the Future of Pharma. Avaible on: http://medicalfuturist.com/6-surprising-trends-shaping-the-future-of-pharma/