Pandemic Fallout – Role of Indian Pharma – Digital Impact & AI

Pandemic Fallout – Role of Indian Pharma - Digital Impact & AI

The current pandemic which the world has been experiencing for the last 6 months now, has made some of the major changes in the priorities that the world sees today as important and critical. We have already witnessed some of these changes and steps taken by the world economies in combating and trying to minimize the adverse impact. We all hope that the recovery would be V-shaped instead of an L-shaped one.

Gurmeet Singh

Pharma Networks * Pharma Consultant

The Digital Impact on various industries is something that will take centre-stage so to speak and the day is not far away as we see more and more of AI, IOT, Robotics getting deep into the basic research at the conceptual stage to the ultimate commercial production and the element of human intervention gets minimized at various stages of exploration, evaluation, basic analytics and a whole lot of things where the AI will become the backbone in simulating permutation-combinations which were simply unthinkable to achieve by the human capabilities alone but will get augmented by the tools of AI, IOT, and robotics.
The WFH – work from home has become the new normal and probably even when the pandemic finally gets over, the corporates and individuals may redefine the new work norms and a whole new work culture may set in going forward.
The earlier disposable culture and ostentatious display of wealth gets replaced by going for simple workable and more sustainable solutions.
Aviation, Hospitality, and Tourism industry – these three sectors are perhaps the most adversely impacted ones during the pandemic and we have seen a lot of countries dependant on tourism are experiencing their economies in the ICU, trying hard to keep them alive. Infact the countries across the globe have pumped in substantial economic stimulus that it will take almost a 5 to 7 years and more to get themselves back in shape once the pandemic is behind us. Aviation and hospitality are the other two sectors, which need to get into innovative solutions to remain relevant. Remember – remaining relevant is most critical to remaining alive.
Education sector – we all know that this is one sector which is ‘recession-proof’ but the stoppage of ‘in-person’ classes have already defined new teaching and coaching methods and a large population in India and other third world countries where internet and computers are available only to privileged few, has kind of created a divide much deeper between the haves and have nots. I am sure there would be innovative solutions and mass education imparting techniques that will swing into action to bridge this gap.
Pharmaceuticals and Life Sciences sector- I have spent a greater part of my career in the Pharma sector and I am passionate about this ever-green sector with a human touch.
I have witnessed that the Pharma sector in India, grow from a stage when the Indian companies were mere distributors of large MNCs to achieving a formidable status today, a fact that the Indian Pharma has been is acknowledged today as the Pharmacy to the world and has demonstrated their readiness to serve the countries – both friends and foes alike by sending the various drug products for Covid19 without having any profit motive..This is what has been recognized by the world powerful nations. Both the Indian Pharma sector and the Indian government has been showered with praise.

In the area of vaccines, it is heartening to note that worldwide we have more than 120 vaccine candidates that are being worked upon at breakneck speed and at least five of these are from notable Indian Pharma companies and to top it all it is worth mentioning that over 70% of the vaccines that are manufactured in the world are made in India. Yes, of course, the Indian companies will have a very responsible task on hand when the vaccine candidate is finally cleared for human consumption as once again the manufacturing sites in India like the Serum Institute, Bharat Biotech, Zydus Cadila, Biological Evans amongst others would be the centre stage of the vaccine manufacturing activity.

I am sure the role of AI, IOT, and Robotics would find tremendous application in the Pharma sector, as we all know that any new chemical entity which is cleared for commercial human use would have initially started with approximately 10000 compounds for possible final drug product hitting the market. Therefore, one can well imagine the important role of AI that will be put to use in molecule identification and the iterations thereof, disease understanding, disruptive product design leading to optimum products and solutions with design thinking and generative approaches that will be a whole new extensive area to be addressed in next article.