
Pharmaceutical Technology
Top Trends 2022 - Pharmaceutical Technology
By TechDogs Editorial Team

Overview
From enabling remote diagnostics to developing newer, more potent drugs to combat the virus, the pharmaceutical industry worked in tandem with technology to deliver it all. Enough with the heavy stuff; that's old news anyway! What we're here to talk about is Pharmaceutical Technology trends and how critical the sector has been (and will be!) for our wellbeing. The pharma industry is still soaring from last year and it is planning to churn out more innovations and advances soon! #InnovationForTheWin
So, join us as we get Professor Utonium (the creator and father of the Powerpuff Girls, duh!) to take you through the top Pharmaceutical Technology trends for 2022!
Yeah, we're going all Powerpuff with these trends! #GoPowerpuffGirls
.jpg.aspx)
Let's take a trip to Townsville, shall we? Professor Utonium is waiting there for us! Oh, did we tell you - he has taken a liking to Pharmaceutical Technology now and is busy all day coming up with new inventions. One day he's busy coming with digital therapeutics; the other day he is working on building up cybersecurity for the pharmaceutical sector. Busy man, we must say!
The Professor (not the one from Money Heist - don't mix up shows!) told us that last year was all about advanced medicines, digital therapeutics and leveraging technologies like AI, Blockchain and Natural Language Processing (NLP) for upgrading the pharmaceutical sector. This year is vastly different, although some of the notable Pharmaceutical Technology trends from 2021 are here to stay, a whole new bunch is awaiting to revolutionize it in the future. So, without further ado, let's take a look at the top 5 Pharmaceutical Technology trends of 2022!
Let's all hear what the Professor has to say!
Trend 1: Pharmacovigilance Will Tighten Up For Safer Drugs

Who knew that a reckless laboratory chimpanzee could turn into a super-intelligent villain! (Talking about Mojo Jojo, of course!) That's a downside of experimentation - they sometimes have unexpected repercussions as well. This is true for medicines and vaccines too, which often have undesirable and unexpected side effects. Calls for some policing, right?
No, the Powerpuff Girls can't help – they are out stopping Mr. Mojo Jojo from destroying the city!
We have the next best thing! Pharmacovigilance is a set of policing activities that prevent adverse drug effects and other medicine-related safety problems. It's out there to ensure that the benefit-to-risk ratio of healthcare products is optimum and that all health professionals and patients are well-informed of the potential aftermath of usage of every pharmaceutical product. With more and more companies entering the pharma market and producing newer substitutes for medicines and vaccines, the need for pharmacovigilance is expanding rapidly. In fact, the global pharmacovigilance market will grow from $6.28 billion in 2021 to over $14.85 billion in 2028, a CAGR of 13.1%. Experts think it will be a crucial trend for the industry in the coming years. After all, aren't we all dependent on pharmaceutical products?
TechDogs' Opinion: We think, this year, the biggest requirement when it comes to pharmacovigilance is not developing safer and more effective medication. Rather, it is building secure pre-clinical and clinical software that can handle huge amounts of high-quality medical data. Pharma companies out there can gather the best raw material, follow top-notch practices and use the latest equipment in drug development but if the technology testing the safety of the medicine is sub-par, everything else goes down the drain.
To test the effect of drugs and vaccines, companies need to scavenge through lots of bulk data since the pharma industry is overloaded with data now. Without the right data mining and analytics software, there would be a lot of data distortion, which would mean companies being unable to detect negative or positive trends, overlooking medication errors, and not identifying detrimental and chronic drug effects. "That can be very scary!", as Professor Utonium says. #WeAgree
Trend 2: There Will Be Real-World-Evidence For Vaccine Development
We all know Bubbles was the sweetest of the Powerpuff Girls (her main ingredient was sugar, after all!) but she was also capable of extreme rage and could fight monsters just as well as her sisters could! Our point? People are different and there's no one-size-fits-all under different circumstances.
Last year, we predicted that IoT sensors and wearable technology had the potential to serve as great assets in digital therapeutics - aiding patient treatments digitally by monitoring heart rate, pulse, physical activity and providing personalized care. This year, they will be dressed up in different superhero suits!
Real-world evidence (or RWE) is a phrase that anyone remotely associated with the pharma industry would be acquainted with. So far, the real-world evidence, aka data from wearables and electronic devices, was only used for certain clinical trials and patient care. That's going to change now in 2022. This year, RWE will contribute majorly to vaccine development and testing, wherein researchers will be able to use patient characteristics and behavioral data to understand the outcomes of different doses and drugs. Imagine knowing the effectiveness of a vaccine depending on the actual symptoms and real-time progression of different patients! #RWEForTheWin
Now that RWE has started proving its worth, the market is predicted to reach $3.13 billion by 2027 and that's undoubtedly going to impact vaccine development in the years to come!
TechDogs' Opinion: We are rooting for RWE to help make vaccines more effective and consistent. Even with the COVID vaccine, we all had different immunities and its effectiveness varied massively across populations, right? Moreover, there are at least a dozen manufacturers globally, with slight variations in potency and side effects.
That's the gap we believe RWE can bridge. We are already noticing that researchers are leveraging RWE to determine whether the two FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccines could effectively prevent SARS-CoV-2 infections. Similarly, RWE will also help track the effectiveness of vaccines and drugs as a preventive measure against hospitalization and even the rate of transmission in vaccinated people worldwide. #RWEAgainstCovid
Trend 3: Improving Cybersecurity Will Be A Top Priority

Your health data and the overall information stored by the pharmaceutical industry is one of the most sensitive data out there - and it must be protected. Unfortunately, we've not got Powerpuff girls to fight all the cyber perpetrators, so this data is highly vulnerable. In fact, Reposify, a computer and network security firm, reveals that 92% of the companies had had their databases exposed to potential leaks at least once, even when 46% had an exposed Server Message Block (SMB) service - one of the most effective cybersecurity tactics!
Last year, there were modifications professed to HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) and HITECH (cybersecurity protocol), which will come into effect in 2022. Talk about can't wait! With these changes being implemented, pharma entities and businesses will be compelled to implement more security measures, reconsider the importance of users' Personal Identifiable Information (PII) and handle them with care!
Moreover, entities covered under HIPAA laws would have to post the estimated fee schedules on their websites to access protected health information (PHI). Pharmaceutical businesses will be more cyber-aware of digital user data, medical disclosures and will also begin providing individuals with a copy of their personal data. #TransparencyIsKey
TechDogs' Opinion: We think the strategy that pharma organizations need right now is a layered defense approach that brings together foundational protection, innovative tools, security culture and workforce education. Most pharmaceutical businesses will have to start with their email security system. We mean, don't you receive most of your medical communication through email?
Being the most common mode of communication in business - emails hold the largest amount of personal and sensitive medical data that the pharma sector must protect. That's where they need to begin securing the information, along with other identity and access management and information sharing security approaches. Moreover, any business with access to sensitive patient data, especially under PII, needs to invest in top-notch cybersecurity tools to prevent data leaks and hacks.
Trend 4: Artificial Intelligence Will Keep Fueling Digitization

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the difference between Powerpuff Girls and Powerpuff Girls Z – it's the next generation! Talking about the next-gen pharmaceutical industry, how can we not mention the powerhouse that is Artificial Intelligence?
AI has already revolutionized several aspects of Pharmaceutical Technology and will continue to do much more in 2022. Pharma newcomers are already using AI to combat challenges in the existing processes by bringing about automation and optimization of the pharmaceutical manufacturing processes, designing effective supply chains and making post-launch strategies. That's just the tip of the iceberg, though!
AI will have a much greater impact on patient identification in the drug discovery and development processes, especially while conducting clinical trials. Pharmaceutical experts will be able to give AI tools their eligibility criteria and AI will make a cohort at the snap of a finger! We bet even Professor Utonium couldn't build an AI this clever! More importantly, AI would make these medical trials more accurate. At the moment, according to an MIT study, only 13.8% of drugs are successful in passing clinical trials. We're counting on AI to boost this number in 2022!
TechDogs' Opinion: We're pinning for AI this year to draw some attention to rare and incurable diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. At present, as per healthcare non-profit Global Genes, nearly 95% of rare diseases don't have an FDA-approved treatment or cure. Pharma companies don't prefer spending time and resources on rare diseases because of their low ROI compared to the time and cost it takes to develop drugs for them.
We believe Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will bring in low-cost drugs trials and innovation capabilities to develop cures for these diseases as well. Moreover, another aspect of AI that will benefit the pharmaceutical industry is its ability to detect cyber-attacks and help develop a robust and responsive security infrastructure (Trend 3).
Trend 5: Innovation Will Be Powered By Big Data Analytics

After ruling the world of finance, manufacturing and several other industry sectors, Big Data is making its big entry into the pharmaceutical world. #WithABang
The year 2022 will be the year of Big Data Analytics that will revolutionize several aspects of the pharma sector. Here, the Powerpuff Girls trio is clinical trials, disease detection and preventive care strengthening which will allow pharma businesses to be prepared for the future.
First of all, it will help identify patterns in clinical trials for faster, better and safer drug development (yes, we know you knew this already!). It will also help in using patterns to identify diseases at much earlier stages and help notice drug reactions to detect high-risk patients - a boon for oncology and neurology departments. Finally, it would allow healthcare professionals to select treatment plans that are tailor-made for the unique needs of their patients by studying their personal data (Trend 2) and correlating it with existing patterns in medical Big Data sets.
No wonder it is predicted that the size of the business intelligence and data analytics software market will reach around $16.5 billion in 2022. The pharmaceutical and healthcare industries have a big role in investing heavily in Big Data Analytics tools in the coming years!
TechDogs' Opinion: Here's a truth - we have not really seen the end of the pandemic, not yet. No one can know for sure what's next but we can be certain that Big Data Analytics will be a huge asset in disease prevention and control. How, you ask? By building models to understand how diseases spread and by identifying patterns, it is possible to devise prevention strategies by leveraging close contact screening, online public opinion monitoring, virus-host analysis, pandemic forecast evaluations, etc.
Big words, we know but we're talking about BIG Data here! Big Data Analytics will enable the pharmaceutical industry to make use of historical data, no matter how large, to come to the closest estimate of critical calculations. For example, understanding how the positivity rate of Covid-19 changed with time was only made possible by studying and comparing the data from the Spanish Flu epidemic. Similarly, Big Data Analytics will enable the pharma industry to forecast and prepare better.
Summing It Up
In the wise words of Professor Utonium, "Once again, I have no idea what I just did."
Well, Professor, you just rounded up the 5 most revolutionary trends in Pharmaceutical Technology and we're so excited to see them in action! From safer drugs and vaccines development strategies to improving pharmaceutical data security and from applying Artificial Intelligence to leveraging Big Data Analytics, we can bet that in 2022 the pharma industry will be "feeling good!" #LookingForward
Liked what you read? That’s only the tip of the tech iceberg!
Explore our vast collection of tech articles including introductory guides, product reviews, trends and more, stay up to date with the latest news, relish thought-provoking interviews and the hottest AI blogs, and tickle your funny bone with hilarious tech memes!
Plus, get access to branded insights from industry-leading global brands through informative white papers, engaging case studies, in-depth reports, enlightening videos and exciting events and webinars.
Dive into TechDogs' treasure trove today and Know Your World of technology like never before!
Disclaimer - Reference to any specific product, software or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by TechDogs nor should any data or content published be relied upon. The views expressed by TechDogs' members and guests are their own and their appearance on our site does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Views and opinions expressed by TechDogs' Authors are those of the Authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of TechDogs or any of its officials. While we aim to provide valuable and helpful information, some content on TechDogs' site may not have been thoroughly reviewed for every detail or aspect. We encourage users to verify any information independently where necessary.
Trending Technology Trends
Social Media Marketing Trends 2025
By TechDogs Editorial Team
Marketing Technology Trends To Watch In 2025
By TechDogs Editorial Team
Media And Entertainment Technology Trends 2025
By TechDogs Editorial Team
Cloud Computing Trends 2025
By TechDogs Editorial Team
Hospitality Technology Trends To Watch In 2025
By TechDogs Editorial Team
Join Our Newsletter
Get weekly news, engaging articles, and career tips-all free!
By subscribing to our newsletter, you're cool with our terms and conditions and agree to our Privacy Policy.
Join The Discussion
Pradnya Sonawane Aug 25, 2022 12:55:31 PM
pradnya comment