The industry experts are very concerned about the stagnation of the Biopharmaceutical industry over the past 5 years. It was mainly due the impact of COVID-19 followed by the Supply Chain and logistics issues in major sea and air routes on account of repeated lockdowns. The high fuel prices and the world heading towards an inflation led recession are not helping either, as they have direct impact on the raw material costs and demand for manufactured drugs. However, there are still some silver linings, some of the trends in this industry that are likely to guide further growth and evolution of this industry is listed below.
1. Innovations in Biologics and Biosimilars Will Gain Ground
In a recent study it is estimated that there are 1,250 biosimilars currently in development across the world. This is going bring in a lot of new products in the biopharma market by 2024. Post COVID-19 FDA is approving twice the number of biosimilars as they did pre-Covid. This is encouraging a lot of American biopharma manufacturers to invest more on R&D and new product development. FDA has recently approved insulin glargine, which is already a pathbreaking event in diabetes management. In many countries approvals are given for biosimilars with the interchangeable designation; encouraging the manufacturers to invest more on biosimilars. The trend of investing more on biologics and biosimilars is going to continue over the next two decades.
2. Intensification of Manufacturing processes
As discussed earlier in the article, with rampant two-digit inflation and reduced demand intensification of the manufacturing process is the only way out for sailing through the competition and demand pressures. This will force the manufacturers to work on the economies of scale and to intensify their existing manufacturing processes. Automation, higher speed of production, high throughput, efficient use of the facilities and leaner organisational structure can take the manufacturing company towards this goal.
3. Advanced Digital Initiatives
Every Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing Company is investing heavily on 4.0 technologies such as Machine Learning, Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence. The rapid adaptation of these technologies is helping biopharma industry to implement automation at every level and transforming the manufacturing processes by cost cutting and increasing efficiency. The R&D is also benefiting by latest digital initiatives like computer aided biology (CAB) which helps in effective designing and modelling of biological systems.
Most of the repetitive mechanical works like packing and branding are already partly automated in most manufacturing companies, however towards the end of 2030 it is estimated that all these non-technical works will be fully automated.
In the coming years, experts believe that many of the challenges that the industry faced over the past 3 years will continue to linger. However, these challenges will act as an accelerant for the transformation that is happening in this industry.