Heraclitus could easily have tried the current pharmaceutical industry and pharmaceutical consultancy. He was the ancient greek language, remember, who contended that things are in flux, that things are involved with a procedure of change. He seemed to be the man Plato (through his mouthpiece Socrates) spent his career quarrelling against. In the realm of pharmaceutical manufacturing, it appears as if Heraclitus might have won your day in lots of ways.
Heraclitus’ famous saying-“You cannot walk into exactly the same river two times”-might be equally relevant for this industry, where regulatory, economic, technological, and global change appears to become the only constant. All of this rapid-fire change may also be greater than pharmaceutical companies can effectively and profitably manage by themselves. So certainly one of vital jobs now of individuals involved with pharmaceutical consultancy helps organizations meet, adjust to, and effectively manage that change.
Just consider some towards the latest developments in R&D, for instance. Individuals pharmaceutical R&D happen to be familiar with utilizing a conceptual tool known as the “innovation funnel” to explain and consider the procedure for figuring out commercially viable compounds. The look is a funnel, wide at the very top and narrow at the end, that has a lot moving in along with a narrow stream being released inside a straight line, foreseeable fashion. A wide range of potential drugs and research options are put in to the wide mouth from the R&D innovation funnel. Then, with time, through trial and testing, the couple of likely marketable candidates dribble in the lower finish from the funnel. And, typically, efforts to shorten the “funnel time” have consisted chiefly in flowing more in to the funnel or just trying to boost productivity and push products through.
But, because of new industry developments and technological changes, the look from the innovation funnel is quickly losing its effectiveness. Using the emergence of recent technology and, especially, the ton of recent data, the innovation funnel has become what some have termed the “innovation bathtub.” Essentially, situations are altering so quickly the old models and old methods for thinking have become moribund at the best and counter-productive at worst. The good thing is that pharmaceutical consultancy can offer vital assistance in this region, mainly in the information arena.
The overall consensus among qualified pharmaceutical consultants is the fact that several key steps should be taken:
Gather more data earlier. Which means that the most powerful, fastest, and least resource-draining screening processes should be placed as far upstream (as full of the funnel) as you possibly can.
Implement procedures for managing important data throughout every point along the way, the funnel. Integration from the entire process may be the goal here to be able to manage information flow and consequent making decisions, both upstream and downstream within the R&D process.
Invest in spending more about and deploying a bigger factor IT sources. It’s been believed that companies within the pharmaceutical industry spend no more than 5% of sales revenue onto it, that is far under the quantity spent by companies in other sectors which depend heavily on information. The sensible outcome is that the majority of the held details are then essentially unstructured and from being simple to search – the reverse of what is needed at this time.
Third step is, obviously, the most crucial since it certainly affects, and most likely encompasses, the very first two. If pharmaceutical companies neglected, they likely will not have the ability to manage the current shifting river of change.
Pharmaceutical consultancy could be the response to the Heraclitean challenges the faces today.
