Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals

The pharmaceutical and healthcare industries are characterised by change - in society, customer needs, government regulations and in medical knowledge. IT departments are expected to work with these developments to enable companies to continue to be competitive.

A dwindling workforce to support an increasingly ageing population means the pressures on both costs and health care reform are rising. The need for sustainability, greater involvement of the consumer through web technologies, personalised medicine and self monitoring devices means healthcare and related industries have to adapt to demographic and lifestyle changes.

Pyradigm understands that the risks and threats to profitability are many: the pace of academic research means the need to get products to market is ever more critical; the loss or expiration of patents, the risk that products will not succeed commercially; counterfeit drugs; the impact of competition; specialisation and niche providers; price controls and price reductions; and difficulties of obtaining and maintaining governmental approvals for products.

Within this context of risk and uncertainty there is a recognition that improving internal productivity and efficiency particularly within the technology function is a strategic imperative in order to control costs, provide operational efficiency and drive competitive financial performance. Indeed, it is the case that IT will play an ever more critical role in the R&D of new products, the supply chain and manufacturing automation.