Pharmaceutical companies have to operate in an industry that is extremely competitive and heavily regulated. To achieve success in this field, corporations in this field have to look out for technological advancements and stay in sync with recent innovations. RPA (robotic process automation) is a prime example of an innovation that has already transformed the pharmaceutical industry. Companies can use RPA to automate some of the tasks performed by humans today.
In this article, we’ll describe how RPA can increase the efficiency of pharmaceutical operations, help enforce safety standards and ensure regulatory compliance.
Why do pharma companies need RPA?
To the industry outsiders, the immense potential of RPA can be difficult to grasp. Let’s look at how RPA can revolutionize pharmaceutical companies’ internal operations.
More efficient operations
Companies can use RPA solutions to outsource straightforward rule-based tasks performed by humans today. As a result, they can dramatically reduce their cost of labour and increase their output. Human workers tend to make human mistakes, especially if the task they’re working on is extremely repetitive. RPA software can perform the same tasks without any errors, and the best part is, companies don’t have to pay any wages for the job that was once performed by humans. This is achieved by using programming languages to instruct bots on how to perform any specific task. If you’re curious about the possibility of increasing the efficiency of your operations, reach out to RPA service providers in your area.
Navigate the business environment
The business of developing and selling medicine requires companies to adhere to safety regulations and other industry-specific rules. Usually, their core business operations are associated with filling out paperwork, data entry, and other mundane tasks that take up a lot of time. Companies can use RPA to take over some of these responsibilities and use their human workforce more efficiently. As a result, every worker can achieve more in a shorter amount of time and all the processes are completed faster.
The applications of RPA are not limited to automating some manual tasks. RPA solutions excel at analyzing large amounts of data. Companies can use this ability to measure their performance in the market, find patterns and plan for future changes.
Reduce human errors
When implemented correctly, RPA systems not only reduce wages but also produce output with fewer errors. Since the pharmaceutical companies are entangled with regulatory bodies and engaged in many types of partnerships, the accuracy of the worker output is extremely important.
RPA solutions can also help out with the integration of data from various sources. For instance, if you want to move your data to the cloud, you might want to get in touch with RPA service providers.
Develop drugs
When developing drugs, pharma companies have to analyze large amounts of data to develop effective medicine. They must also track the test results, potential side effects and test their drug on many different samples. It’s a very complicated process and data analysis plays a big part in doing it right. As we’ve previously mentioned, when it comes to analyzing large sets of data, humans can’t perform anywhere near as well as machines. In the ideal scenario, pharma companies couple RPA solutions with AI models, trained to detect patterns and respond accordingly.
By improving drug research and development, RPA service providers can help individuals all around the world live longer and happier lives. Theoretically, it can also lower the costs of drugs by improving the efficiency of company operations.
What type of tasks can be automated with RPA?
RPA can automate tasks in the front-office and back-office as well. It can generate notifications, arrange the calendar and use NLP to analyze documents. RPA service providers estimate that almost half of the jobs performed in the pharmaceutical industry today can be automated.
Clinical Trials
In the process of developing new types of medicine, pharmaceutical companies hold many Randomized Clinical Trials to test drugs’ potential side effects. This produces vast amounts of data, which is currently analyzed and organized by human employees. As we previously mentioned, RPA bots are much better at analyzing large data sets. The software makes much fewer errors and lets us gain valuable insight into the clinical trial results.
Currently, humans are tasked with entering TMF data manually. RPA solutions can fill in these forms with patients’ data automatically. It can also raise an alarm when a certain piece of data is missing.
Dealing with regulatory bodies
Pharma companies are under immense pressure to abide by regulations. That’s why there’s usually a separate department to make sure that all the regulations are met. The employees tasked with regulatory compliance have to file paperwork and communicate within and outside the company. Their tasks include collecting documents, verifying the information on them, and submitting them to respective regulatory bodies. All of this takes a lot of time and energy. The process is fairly straightforward, so it can be streamlined with RPA. Reach out to RPA service providers to learn more about the possibilities for automation.
Logistics
Logistics of pharmaceutical companies involve many operations which can be streamlined and simplified with the help of RPA. When distributing prescription drugs in the USA, companies must operate within a specific framework. Pharma companies can use RPA to automate tasks associated with inventory management, supply chain, processing payments and refunds, and other logistical tasks. The market for pharma logistics alone is valued at almost $80 billion, and growing every year. Even minimal improvements in data analysis and supply chain efficiency can bring massive savings to a company.
Forecasting
The usual forecasting methods used by corporations are not suitable for pharma companies. This is mainly because pharmaceutical products get replaced or re-released very frequently. It’s difficult to maintain a long history of data for each product. Most of the usual forecasting methods rely on multiple years of data to make accurate predictions.
Combined with AI, RPA can be customized specifically for analyzing pharma sales data to predict future sales and demand. RPA can also help with organizing and merging data from old sources to the new systems.
Summary
Companies in the pharmaceutical industry have to adjust to many external factors: potential side effects of their drugs, changing regulations, and business concerns. RPA solutions can resolve many of the headaches associated with these tasks.
