The Silicon Review ^Asia

The pharmaceutical world is in the midst of a sea change. As new deadlines approach for compliance with the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), pharmaceutical companies are racing — and struggling — to comply. The provisions’ end goal — creating an electronic database to identify and trace the distribution of prescription drugs throughout the U.S. and ensuring proper licensing — is clearly an important one for public safety. But that doesn’t mean it’s an easy transition.

Meanwhile, companies still are going about their regular business of developing life-changing pharmacological solutions. To be successful, organizations must maintain a delicate balancing act and aren’t able to fully direct their attention to any one area.

Fortunately, modern cloud technology, including enterprise resource planning, stands to aid pharmaceutical executives with these challenges. Not only do cloud technologies help companies update their reporting and accounting processes to meet modern standards, but they also open up new internal efficiencies that allow for unprecedented innovation.

Pharma companies have access to a mind-boggling supply of genomic data; the datasets available for research double in size every eight months and in the past 10 years. When pharmaceutical companies move to cloud-based solutions, including enterprise resource planning, the sky truly is the limit for innovation and discovery.