(74d) What Challenges Need to be Addressed, and What New Technological Approaches Are Needed to Put Life Sciences on Path to Pharma 4.0?

No matter where one looks today, one reads about Industry 4.0, Internet of Things, and Digital Transformation. In the Life Sciences industry this is being referred to as Pharma 4.0. The speaker, based on more than 30 years of experience in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing will put forward perspectives on why Pharma is lagging behind significantly, and what it needs to do ready itself for Pharma 4.0. Over the past 40 years, the way of doing things in Pharma has been dominated by a culture of compliance that has fed an ultra-conservative approach to adopting new, innovative approaches to enabling the manufacturing supply chain. How can this culture be changed, and what needs to happen with foundational technologies in order to enable Digital Transformation, from Process R&D through manufacturing? What constitutes the core ‘Digital Thread’ that is needed to enable Life Sciences companies to transform to a digitally enabled enterprise, across the entire product lifecycle? Addressing these challenges is fundamental to Pharma catching up to Industry 4.0