A recent survey by Industry body, Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) has revealed that the pharmaceutical industry in India, growing at a rate of 8-9 percent per year, is pegged to reach $48 billion by 2007.

This growth has spurred players in the Indian pharmaceutical industry to explore newer avenues of drug research, discovery and development, promising higher capital investments in the near future.

Many multinational companies have entered India to market drugs and conduct clinical trails and research. Thus, pharmaceuticals research, manufacturing, and outsourcing have received an impetus in the country, creating the image of a land of opportunities in the pharmaceuticals space.

The CII study also predicts that India could become a global pharma hub by exporting domestically produced generic products and positioning itself as an offshoring destination for clinical and pre-clinical research and other support services. There is tremendous potential in the Indian pharma market itself. Consumer spending on healthcare went up from 4 percent of GDP in 1995 to 7 percent in 2007. That number is expected to rise to 13 percent of GDP by 2015.

According to a recent McKinsey report, that will turn India into a $20-billion pharma market. This implies that pharma companies will have a huge R&D, sales and marketing network spread across geographies, and their telecommunication costs can grow exponentially.

Therefore, pharma companies need to embrace technology that can offer dynamic lines of communication between the global markets and their manufacturing and research centres in India. Ultimately, India’s growth as a global player hinges on its ability to overcome challenges and, given the scenario outlined, integrating and facilitating cost-effective communication is a major challenge.

CLINICAL TRIALS:
In particular, India is poised to emerge as a key contract research hub. According to a study by consultancy major Ernst & Young, the total market for clinical research activities in India is expected to touch $1.5-2 billion by 2010. A.T. Kearney has listed India second (just after China) for attractiveness as a clinical trials centre.

With pharma majors facing increased pressure on profit margins, spiralling R&D costs and increasing overheads, outsourcing of clinical research processes to third parties in developing countries seems a viable option. By contracting such work to India, they save 40-60 per cent in new drug development.

Networking and communications technology is considered the enabler for many aspects of the contract research and clinical trial business. The application of technology has the potential to vastly improve:

(i) Time to market, achieved through significant reductions in patient recruitment intervals and more efficient data management.

(ii) Cost containment, achieved through the reduced re-work required for a single trial and internal savings on systems development.

(iii) Improved productivity, achieved by re-use of standard networks, study sites and processes across multiple trials that will release key staff quicker.

(iv) Faster and better informed decisions, achieved by implementing web-based “real-time” data access for rapid decision-making and project management reporting.

Some specific challenges that plague the Indian pharma industry:

(i) The “silo effect” in large companies that prevent clinicians from sharing pertinent data;

(ii) A lack of standardised data definitions, necessitating duplicate testing and trials; and

(iii) Weak process and systems integration that slows time to market

(iv) System thinking-based communication platforms could help pharma companies overcome these obstacles by developing an electronic clinical development system based on Internet platform initiatives.

Consider the edge they provide:

Secure extranets for research partners: In an ideal networked pharmaceutical business model, the company stores the intellectual capital that is critical to its competitive advantage, in-house. The remaining information is outsourced through strategic alliances with peers and vendors. These alliances could be short-term or long-term and geographically independent. Converging Web-based collaboration tools, and secure communications, companies can be in seamless contact.

R&D supply-chain management: Management not in terms of logistics alone but in terms of large volumes of data. An example would be mapping gene bank data, or when gathering genotype data from external sources. Supply-chain management allows sharing of critical systems while protecting intellectual property.

E-learning and shared work-space: Converging communication technology allows for enhancing collaborative efforts for on-demand e-learning and informal knowledge sharing.

During clinical trials, establishing the protocols and the study design is most of the work. Internet-based automated application builders can help clinicians design procedures, capture data, and establish workflow rules.

Clinical portals: Pharmaceutical companies can widen their intellectual footprint beyond partners with online multimedia environments that speed clinical trial data transactions and exchange with regulatory agencies and non-secure partners.

R&D command centres: Command centres that are hosted or built in-house, can handle multiple data and information feeds from extranets, intranets, and portals.

This allows for rapid response to unexpected regulatory or clinical problems and also quick redeployment of intellectual property to new projects.

IT ADOPTION:
In the early days of the Indian pharmaceutical industry, there was a stiff price war amongst companies as they focused on reverse engineering of complex molecules at lower costs and manufactured “me-too” products with same therapeutic properties. Now, Indian pharma companies are ramping up their R&D capabilities to focus on new drug regimes and molecules. This re-iterates the need for robust and secure networks for large data transactions.

Small and medium sized Indian pharma companies are still not convinced about the long-term benefits of adopting cutting-edge technology due to constraints such as budgets and limited infrastructure. Although the SME pharma market is very large and has tremendous potential it is yet to be tapped to its full potential.

Many Indian SME pharma companies are not into drug research and testing. Still, they need technology to improve efficiency in quality assurance and control, and for adherence to regulatory requirements for operation and testing, improving batch tracking and expiry date tracking, optimising credit and logistics control, consolidating sales promotions, discounts, and purchase-sales-inventory analysis and optimally tracking consignment sales.

RIDING INTERNET ECONOMY:
The Internet economy is rapidly changing the face of the pharmaceutical industry by delivering new Web-enabled solutions to solve many business and primary care issues. Automating administrative processes such as billing, purchasing, etc., lead to increased sales-marketing and R&D productivity, reducing operating costs. Emerging sciences such as genomics and proteomics increase the number of drug targets from the hundreds to tens of thousands. Internet applications will help to optimise large volumes of complex data and help better identify drug candidates.

The question is no longer when technology will impact the business of pharmaceuticals, but how the industry will adopt technology to get the most out of the new global business environment. Today’s pharma companies need scalable networking solutions that grow with the company, provide productivity for a mobile workforce, and meet pertinent security regulations. (Source: Sify Business news)