How will the Internet of Things affect life sciences?
Scott Weiss, senior director of product management, IDBS talks about the Internet of Things (IoT) and externalised research and development (R&D) in life sciences
The pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors are under pressure from all directions to deliver products faster that will benefit global healthcare provisions. There are three prominent obstacles creating traffic along the road of drug development.
Patent expirations have increased the cost of drug development forcing the hand of large organisations to adapt their R&D business models.
The cost of bringing these drugs to market has accelerated to almost $2.6bn, leading to a product development model that increasingly relies on outsourcing to smaller and more agile organisations.
This means that lab technology must now support an externalised, virtualised way of working. The convergence of these challenges means firms must cut costs, modernise their technology strategy and bring products to market more quickly.
R&D in life sciences is a global race
We are entering the Fourth Industrial Revolution: on the precipice of “an era of automation, constant connectivity and accelerated change, in which the IoT meets the Smart Factory”, according to Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum. This may be a bold statement, but technology has never played a more central role in the world around us.
It is impossible to deny we live in a connected world, which will impact the R&D operations of life sciences organisations. The last decade has seen most pharma and biotech research teams drift away from paper-based processes, to storing information electronically.
As a result, firms are keeping more accurate audit trails and more efficiently retaining IP. The next decade will see this data become the driving force pushing life science innovation.
Cyber threats, data deluge and collaboration
The average laboratory will be supported by a plethora of increasingly intelligent, connected technologies.
Software will become more ‘social’, allowing real-time collaboration between researchers to share and build on each other’s work in the Cloud; analytics and data visualisation tools will link lab instruments to automatically process vast streams of data, partially automating the identification of new drugs and treatments; robotics will support researchers by taking on time-consuming administrative jobs; and even basic tasks like inventory management will benefit from predictive technology that ensures research teams are always in stock of the materials essential for drug development.
The industry needs to prepare for the impending arrival of ‘Millennials’ too, as digital-natives will occupy a much of the workforce by 2025.
These up-and-coming researchers are not only capable of dealing with continuous technology updates, but welcome it. This generational shift is driving a similar step-change in consumer appetite for personalised healthcare.
This externalised, connected ‘IoT’ technology approach raises concerns for IP and cybercrime. Will new technologies keep pace with these emerging threats, and avoid cracking under the weight of such vast volumes of scientific research data? Time will tell.
But what is clear, is that informatics technology will play a foundational role in delivering these business transformations, and will be crucial for the industry’s ability to deliver new products and treatments to the market that change lives around the world.