The economic sector was claimed to be the most affected as the sales and demand for goods have been going down. The whole economy is rather in a boom or in a depression. Health & care sector is the one which is least affected, it is a mother wit to identify that the pharmaceutical industry has been influenced the most both in a good way and in a bad way.
We have always been judgemental about digitisation in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry. This pandemic has given a whole new spectrum of new paths to get things done. It can lead to a complete reconstruction of the medical field. The various aspects of change that can be recognised and the foremost things that should be implemented by the sector are crisis management, people management and adaptation to change and accept digitisation.
A few aspects that are already set up in the industry are digital consultation of remote patients; even in the case of covid-19 patients who are at a preliminary stage. On one side, the experts are pressing on the factor that globalisation has been negatively affected. There is a 1/8th decrease in the growth of pharmaceutical companies. On the other hand of this particular argument, another set of specialists claim that this is the most suitable situation to flourish the concept of globalisation throughout the world, and why is it said so? The reason is, following the incident with China, where the country refused to cooperate with research on corona-virus, most of the European and american countries retrieved from trade from China and this has positively affected the trade between the other countries & India, as being a large trader of pharmaceutical goods.
While we talk about the changes after the corona-virus impact, certain things should be taken into consideration while adapting these changes into the industry:
Understanding the situation we are in: that conspicuously pinpoint to a factor that is education, to understand the circumstance to a further advanced level especially for a developing country like India, this is one of the reasons which constrains digitisation the industry, due to the lack of education it might be rather difficult for people to grasp the basic idea of how to handle the digital world. Therefore, a detailed analytical plan should be made to apply this method to the practical world with “No- regret Action” this means to find the trigger points and reenact them to bring out a more effective and useful plan.
With all, these are the positive changes that happened and can happen in the near future. Flipping through the optimistic side of renovation in the industry was pretty easy, but to collect the adverse effect it indeed takes a lot of pain, talking about the fear points, things that should be considered is the “14 days quarantine period” of the employee and less utilisation of the resources.
Further diving deep into the issues we might look at the insight that the pharmaceutical industry will take up and is taking up a lot of burden on paying the quarantined employees which could not be prevented and it is a Hobson’s choice, Since in a developing country like India the layoff would turn into a big issue as the unemployment rate would go drastically upward.
The next case scenario is about the less utilisation of resources; factories could not function to their full potential because of the government’s guidelines of less workers at work space and the shipment of essentials of pharmaceutical factories is being delayed and is becoming a more lengthy process.
Besides these issues, another change has happened in the industry that the testing of covid-19 has been spread to the private labs, which is also an extension of privatisation in the country, the catastrophe has opened a new opportunity for people to educate themselves. Digital knowledge has become a need rather than a luxury, it always was, but the world failed to recognise the importance of such features and ignored it for the past decades.
It could not be said that if the pharma industry has been affected more or less. There are always pros and cons of everything that happens. Some pharma companies have gotten suppressed and some are enjoying the perks that have been given up to them because of this Covid-19 situation. This pandemic has made us look at another way of living and take another path & has led us to another era of digitisation. This also proves that during the times’ of crisis mankind becomes more capable and innovative as to escape the dreadful ways of catastrophe that have affected decades. Hopefully, this too shall pass, and a brighter future awaits the world.