What are the Roadblocks to Digitalization of Biopharmaceutical Industry?

The biopharmaceutical industry believes that digitalization will help the companies to achieve their strategic imperatives.

Fremont, CA: The large-scale adoption of digital capabilities is lagging, but executives see the potential value of digitalization throughout R&D. Meanwhile, a significant risk aversion to large-scale adoption of digitalization, particularly among the largest companies, is witnessed. Also, digital tools and platforms are becoming more integral in how do the companies collaborate, analyze, and manage data as well as enhance the patient experience.

In a report, the executives stated that they are experiencing opportunities for these digital capabilities to achieve real, measurable value in the organization. The majority of the respondents says that using real world data throughout R&D will improve the decision-making, and some believe that the ability to manage data in a better way across the enterprise may deliver measurable business value.

Most of this potential value lies ahead on the basis of the current level of digital adoption. A few respondents said that they had gained their desired state of digitalization, which is not very surprising because it requires significant investment, the right talent, and generally involves major organizational change.

These barriers then add to the risk aversion, which was noted as one of the most substantial barriers to adoption, especially in more prominent organizations.

Here are three roadblocks to digitalization.

• R&D functions are often going it alone- Digitalization is being implemented in silos and is being driven by individual R&D functions. Most of the executives say that digitalization is happening in silos inside their organizations, rather than across functions, throughout R&D, or the entire enterprise.

• Lots of pilots, but few successes at scale- Companies are adopting a cautious and incremental approach to digitalization, with many digital pilots, proofs of concept, and minimum viable products. Together these amount to sizeable investments in digital transformation, but this focus on special use cases rather than the broad relevance, with repeatability and extensibility, means that companies are not able to understand the payoff of digitalization at scale.

• Metrics are needed to measure impact and justify the investment- According to the executives, they struggle to measure the success of digitalization, and without clear metrics, it isn't easy to assess the success of previous investments and justify the potential impact of new investments in emerging technologies. Being able to demonstrate and quantify the value of an initiative is essential, especially when technology adoption means disrupting a currently functioning process.

See also: Top Biotech Solution Companies