Continuous Improvement for Drug Industry: Part 7: Six building blocks for digital transformation in pharma and medical device R&D.

Part 1 of this blogpost series introduced digitalization in pharma and medical device R&D while, Part 2 discussed on the need for digitalization.

Part 3 mentioned on- How to go for digitalization in R&D, Part 4 discussed advantages of digitalization, Part 5 elaborated on digitalization in various phases of drug research and development, while Part 6 highlighted on selecting the right R&D digitalization platform.
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Continuing the series, in this blogpost I shall discuss on- Six building blocks for digital transformation in pharmaceutical and medical devices R&D.

Six building blocks for digital transformation-

The six building blocks of digital transformation are as follows:

1. Vision: Develop a digital vision for the organization while always considering the impact on stakeholders/ distributors/ customers.
2. Developing and upskilling talent: Identify talent needs and strategies for filling gaps. Create new organizational structures to integrate digital talent and leverage digital learning programs, technology and external sources to develop talent. It is also important for companies to create a new organizational structure and deployment model to integrate any new digital team member into the organization.
3. Agile working: Rapidly test digital initiatives and make revisions based on insights gained from the field. Companies must create an Agile environment that makes it possible to test new approaches or technologies quickly and then iteratively make improvements based on customer feedback, all while managing risks.
4. New technology: New technology capabilities form the foundation of any digital transformation. Create new technology that covers areas including commerce front ends and integration architecture. As organizations evaluate their applications and data infrastructure, they should identify gaps that might prevent them from achieving their digital vision and linked potential opportunities.
5. Data use: Consider data related issues in strategy road maps such as architecture requirements and identify specific use cases that will benefit from analytics.
6. Driving the adoption and scaling of digital initiatives: Scale change across the organization with a focus on product, service, commercial strategy, execution, customer service, experimentation, transactions etc.

 
The above six parameters apply to digital transformation initiatives in general and also to digitalization in pharma and medical device R&D. Once the digital building blocks are taken care of, the next but one of the most important challenges of digital transformation is transition from existing analog working to going digital.
 
Coming up in the next part of this series- How to transform existing R&D setup to a digitalized R&D!

​Meanwhile, note that there are fifteen different Continuous Improvement pathways for pharmaceutical and medical device R&Ds. Are you planning a Continuous Improvement initiative for your R&D division?

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Upcoming articles in this series-

Part 8:  How to transform existing R&D setup to a digitalized R&D.
Part 9:  Tips and Quick wins of digitalization in pharmaceutical and medical device R&D.

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Related reading:

1. Kaizen for Pharmaceutical, Medical Device and Biotech Industries. 
2. Continuous Improvement Tools: 30 Tools to Drive Profitability, Quality and Operational Effectiveness in manufacturing & Service Industry. 
3. Continuous Improvement for Pharmaceutical R&D.

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#continuousimprovement  #digitalization #digitalizationinpharmaceuticalindustry #buildingblocksofdigitalization