What challenges will the pharmaceutical industry face in 2024, and how is it working to overcome them?
For any industry, looking forward, attempting to predict challenges, and coming up with innovative solutions is an ongoing concern, and the pharmaceutical industry is no different.
The pharmaceutical industry was worth an estimated $1.48 trillion USD in 2022, with that number only expected to climb in 2023 and 2024.
After the recent global COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a rapid-fire vaccine response, supply chain issues, and PPE shortages worldwide, and more recently, multiple conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, the pharmaceutical industry hasn’t been immune to challenges being faced by many other industries.
In the following article, we’ll be looking at 6 of the most significant challenges facing the pharma industry in 2024, including:
Global Supply Chain Disruptions
Increased Need for Qualified Professionals
Challenges Reaching Healthcare Professionals
The Collection and Analysis of Data
Increased Transparency
Overcoming Resistance to Change
Global Supply Chain Disruptions
Every time we visit a doctor and get a prescription or visit the pharmacist with a script for medication, we expect that medication to be sitting behind the counter, ready to go. 10-15 minutes while the pharmacist gets it ready can be annoying. Waiting a day or two for it to get shipped can be a disaster.
Having to wait days or weeks for a medication to arrive because of pharmaceutical supply chain issues is a growing reality for many patients worldwide. However, it’s important to note these problems aren’t new. They were present before the recent pandemic; it just highlighted the difficulties and exasperated them.
One unique solution to global supply chain issues is 3D printing. Laxxon’s SPID®-Technology (Screen Printing Innovational Drug Technology) is a cutting-edge patented 3D screen printing technology that facilitates different pharmaceutical forms of application, such as oral, transdermal, and implantable dosage forms through geometric shaping and heterogeneous distribution of active ingredients.
Increased Need for Qualified Professionals
A lack of qualified professionals is one of the biggest challenges the pharmaceutical industry faces in 2024. By qualified professionals, we mean the technicians and personnel performing the intellectual and technical work that requires extensive knowledge specific to certain fields within the pharmaceutical industry.
If the pharmaceutical industry wants to keep expanding and see consistent growth, it’ll need a substantial investment in the future of its workforce.
Challenges Reaching Healthcare Professionals
Reaching healthcare professionals will present a growing challenge to the pharmaceutical industry moving forward. With so many stakeholders involved in the decision-making process of deciding which service or product they utilize, such as patients, care providers, and insurers, reaching the right target will be extremely difficult for marketers.
Crafting unique marketing packages that appeal to all stakeholders will be a priority for pharmaceutical marketers as they move into 2024. For many, a company website may be considered unbelievable, while scientific journals and studies are hard to digest. Marketers will need to formulate a marketing strategy that seamlessly blends strong evidence and scientific data with marketing appeal.
The Collection and Analysis of Data
Data has quickly become a global commodity, and it is one asset that no industry, especially the pharmaceutical industry, can choose to ignore. Data collection and analysis has rapidly become an essential industry all on its own.
AI technology is rapidly evolving and playing a significant role in the collection and analysis of data. Not only that, but AI programs are helping to reduce the average human error rate on data to deliver more accurate analysis. The average error rate on data entry hovers around 1%, but in some cases, has been found to be between 4-14% in some studies.
By utilizing AI, pharmaceutical companies can clearly define parameters while vastly reducing human data entry errors and data analysis bias.
Increased Transparency
The recent global pandemic was a unique opportunity for the pharmaceutical industry as a whole to gather support from the worldwide community and present what it does in an open and transparent manner with a lot of support from the general public.
The pharmaceutical industry faces a unique challenge: sharing more information about clinical trials, testing, and development of products and drugs while not giving away product information to competitors and ensuring the confidentiality of test subjects and patients is secure and protected from online threats.
Overcoming Resistance to Change
There are several reasons why the pharmaceutical industry is so resistant to change:
Management resistance to operational alterations.
Regulations that require revaluation or lobbying can be expensive.
Online threats which limit the willingness of some companies to transfer to 100% digital communication and record keeping.
While the benefits of changing operations, regulations, or processes may be evident to some, the cost of these changes must be clearly visible to all stakeholders and presented within a roadmap that highlights the ROI and process to all. A long-term approach to change will highlight the benefits for many years to come rather than focusing on the short-term costs associated with implementing the changes.
Often, strict regulations and compliance have determined processes and procedures rather than the most economical or efficient pathway.
Challenges of Change Facing the Pharmaceutical Industry
Instead of facing one considerable threat or challenge, the pharmaceutical industry faces many small challenges. However, rather than trying to solve one issue at a time, the pharmaceutical industry will not only need to embrace technology and be open to change but face the future with a holistic approach to industry improvement.
At Laxxon Medical, we have a futuristic and modern approach to overcoming many of the pharmaceutical industry’s issues, including the existing and looming supply chain issues, thanks to our SPID®-Technology (Screen Printing Innovational Drug Technology).
3D printing allows custom medications that better suits an individual’s needs to be produced and leads to a better patient experience, but it will also reduce reliance on global manufacturing facilities and a long and complicated global supply chain.
Laxxon Medical is dedicated to engineering patented 3D pharmaceutical solutions that optimize products and benefit patients. Our goal is to establish SPID®-Technology as a manufacturing process with the individual and the pharmaceutical partner in mind.
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