Pharma’s Covid-Powered Digital Revolution

ln addition to inventing, producing, and distributing valuable vaccines to all four corners of the globe, pharma has had to reinvent supply chains and completely overhaul its systems and technology to ensure it is up to the ongoing challenge of protecting the world against Covid – which continues to repeatedly flare up.

How, exactly, has the COVID pandemic led to a digital revolution in the pharma sector?

One of the pandemic’s most interesting legacies is an ongoing investment in technology. Digitalization in the pharma sector will soon touch every one of us – so if any company operating under the pharmaceutical umbrella fails to invest in its digital capabilities now, it will get left far behind.

Advanco was one of the first companies in the pharmaceutical sector to highlight the importance of how digital systems will sit behind a revolution in how supply-chains are structured. Indeed, the advent of the virus has highlighted the importance for product track & trace to work together, resulting in a supply-chain which will minimize costs for pharmaceutical companies and lead towards a new standard of openness and cooperation.

This is something that advanco has long pushed for. We have long argued that the hardware and the software among different vendors needs to be much more aligned and should work much closer together, resulting in much more open and cooperative serialization processes.

Machines need to speak to each other in a common language, regardless of the manufacturer. Being an independent company, advanco can work with any machine from any supplier making it machine and hardware independent.

This will become even more important in the coming months and years as the fourth industrial revolution, Industry 4.0. continues to emerge. A combination of cyber-physical systems, the Internet of Things and the Internet of Systems will power Industry 4.0 and allow the smart factory to become a reality.

Conclusion

As a result of the support of smart machines that keep getting smarter as they get access to more data, the global pharmaceutical sector will become more efficient and productive and less wasteful. Ultimately, it’s the network of these machines that are digitally connected with one another and create and share information that will result in the true power of Industry 4.0. – and which will overhaul the way that companies within pharma sector interact with each other.

This is one of the overall themes that advanco is committed to delivering – and we are pleased with the progress that has already been made.

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