Five trends to watch out for in the pharma industry in 2021

Amongst the most significant trends to watch out for in the pharma industry in 2021 is how consumer behaviour has witnessed a significant acceleration towards e-consultations through live video calls between doctors and patients, e-purchases of medicines by uploading doctor's e-prescriptions, and home-collection of blood samples. At the same time, the combined power of the Internet, data science, connected devices and AI have expedited the pace of digital transformation in pharma organisations to improve quality and productivity. Skilled manpower in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), cloud computing, robotic process automation (RPA), and other technological areas are helping speed up drug repurposing and development of biomarkers. Al algorithms, Big Data and early-stage experiments using new technologies are helping substantially lower time and costs in bringing new drug formulations to market. The entire research and development cycle spanning data management, clinical trials and testing are now so technology oriented that pharma companies are increasingly on boarding'health-tech' partners and tech start-ups in the journey to drug discovery, hitherto a pure science domain.