No-code: A Prescription that is working for Pharma Industry

The buzz on the street in terms of the pharma world has currently been all about the COVID 19 vaccine. From Moderna to Pfizer and even the Russian Sputnik. It is all we can talk about.

However, the cost of developing these has been much higher than the average $1-$3 billion that are usually put into developing a new drug.

Pharma companies are looking for ways to become more productive, efficient, and leverage digital technologies to transform their business. No-code for pharma is at just the right place for that.

Change in 2020 has been catalyzed by COVID 19. For example there had been an unprecedented acceleration in the vaccine development timeline.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has proven itself to be efficient, Insilico Medicine of Hong Kong proved that its AI system could make a drug for fibrosis in about a month when that would normally take a traditional organization 100x the month and 7-8 years of time. However, there are many other areas of pharma companies longing for improvement.

The proof is in the pudding for no-code and pharma

No-code for pharma is an appealing route to take; no-code application development tools at the heart of it all digitize the core of the business and, as a result, other key performance indicators around them.

While the concept of digital applications is not a new introduction to pharma, their usage to automate workflows and processes without writing any code is. It’s all a method to increase customer experience by enhancing the work-environment and finally converting that to increased productivity and profitability.

Before we move forward, we want to remind you that no-code for pharma will not be taking anyone’s jobs, it is only building bridges to make the same jobs more effective and accurate.

Still don’t believe us? 

We all know that time is of the absolute essence in the pharmaceutical industry. Whether it is research, manufacturing, testing, or quality control; time is of the essence.

Applications that help manage these processes traditionally take 9-12 months to build and perfect, often to become redundant. On the other hand, no-code for pharma will build applications with the same functionality in just weeks, sometimes even days.

This would mean using no-code for pharma would save 3-5 hours per week per employee on handling data and processes.

The speed that no-code can make applications, the investment it requires, the methods and accessibility, and the return are all unparalleled and of huge benefit to the pharmaceutical world.

This reaction to digital transformation inertia in the life sciences is new and better than ever and according to Deloitte, with a digitized core, including intelligent automation, a company may be able to streamline the number of days it takes to release a drug product from approximately 100 days to seven.

No-code for pharma in action

Case 1: Quixy and Vance Pharma

Headquartered in Hyderabad, Vance and Health is a fast-growing Pharmaceutical Company in India. The company’s business line includes manufacturing, fabricating, and processing drugs in pharmaceutical preparations for human or veterinary use.

They faced challenges in managing their relationships with their API (active pharmaceutical ingredient) suppliers and creating a method to quality control all the supplies coming into the organization.

A solution that was flexible, automated, and precise was required to fulfill these requirements. There were too much inaccuracy and uncertainty in manual processes, which needed to be diminished.

The solution here was simple for an advanced no-code service provider.

Quixy helped them build an automated procurement system as per their requirements. This included the creation of indents, supplier selection, quotation management, issuing of Purchase Orders (POs), receiving materials, and associated quality check processes.

This enabled a massive transformation in workflows and their functioning. All the processes have been automated and the respective executives are notified of any actions required to speed up the procurement processes.

This whole 2-week process took away the excessive and imprecise use of email-based processes and improves efficiency in the pharmaceutical procurement chain by a huge 30%. Read on about the details here.

Case 2: Optymyze and Managed Care

Managed Care is a pharma company that saw the roadblocks that insurance caused in the healthcare industry in terms of medical fees, accessibility to medication, and more.

This was all due to complex systems, huge amounts of paperwork, and lots of time lag because of the large amount of human involvement.

Seeing this huge gap, Optymyze stepped in here to streamline this process without any code. It allows a building of a network of many different parties of the pharmaceutical world. The goal is always to use the company and insurance-based data to make healthcare more affordable and accessible.

No-code for pharma helped create a streamlined process and level the playing field for individuals and save all parties involved time and money.
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BONUS: Why No-Code for pharma should be used to Home-Build Applications?

While we have been presenting some hardcore facts (if we may say so ourselves), the fact of the matter is that the market has a huge truckload of ready-to-use applications that may seem to be the right fit from time to time.

Here are some compelling reasons we believe that no-code should be used to create applications in pharma.

1. Most of these pre-made applications are offered by large, multi-national pharmaceutical companies. They are usually created to be exclusive to the market they originate in and fail to provide assistance or language controls across borders. This means that such pre-made applications limit growth alongside the application, something that is a given with no-code platforms.

2. The one size fits all functionality of pre-made applications has proven itself to not be effective time and time again. Having room for application edits when the need presents itself is important to accommodate specific business needs.

3. Cross-platform functionality can be easily integrated into applications that are citizen developed. For traditional applications, this is different; they usually only run-on particular kinds of systems. The same goes for maintenance and scaling. Updates from the backend help update things in the front in a no-code world.

4. You know the regulatory and compliance needs of your organization best. While managing customer needs no-code platforms to make it easy to keep an eye on the bottom line. All whilst editing as per consumer needs.

5. Finally, make the apps as easy as possible to use! Each team has unique needs and skills, and no-code for pharma accommodates that. Make sure the applications are hyper customized, so their usage is maximized.

Conclusions on the no-code road for pharma

Considering the needs that 2020 has presented, there is no greater need than for such technology than now. We need to adopt rapid application development and stay on-trend with technology for the sake of efficiency and precision.

Allowing technical pharma employees to come from their own background, use their existing expertise, and develop the applications they need can lead to rapid problem solving and a feeling of empowerment in the solution-finding process.

No-code for pharma takes the technology one step further from just an application to an innovative solution ‘I helped create.’

In any case, we have to also remind you of the cost and time benefits of no-code for pharma as a whole and how those can be redirected towards the things that matter, making lives easier. All while maintaining enterprise-grade security or the information and the employees.

Alok Upadhyaya

An IITian Mr Upadhyaya’s 44 yrs track record involves successful completion and establishment of World Bank financed Delhi Noida Bridge, India’s largest photogrammetric set-up and prestigious Delhi State Spatial Data Infrastructure (DSSDI) project.