What Patients Need to Know about Pharmaceutical Supply Chains—Chapter 12

Everything a critcal thinker needs to know about the supply chains for SARS-CoV-2 injections—packed with facts and evidence that can't be refuted.

12. DRUG DEVELOPMENT FOR THE 21st CENTURY

A new paradigm is required

I hope to have convinced you that the dysfunction in pharmaceutical supply chains can be traced upstream to drug development. Also, that wholesale change is the only way forward. A new paradigm is required, and it isn’t even new. It’s about learning from the past to lay a path for the future. The previous chapter tells us how successfully physicians, doctors, and other healthcare professionals (known collectively as HCPs) were, working in collaboration with experienced partners, to develop drugs.

So, the first strand of drug development for the 21st century is engaging deeply and meaningfully with HCPs.

Simplifying the process

The next strand is to move from the current three step process of discovery, development, and production, to just two-steps—prototyping and production.

Prototyping is used in almost every other industry, except pharmaceuticals.

In aviation, it is wind tunnels and flight simulators, using the full weight of STEM—Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

At the core of STEM is integration of all the skills required to bring products to market. ‘TEM’ is the missing ingredient that must go back in the pot.

So, with a mix of learning from earlier and knowledge of modern-day production systems, the following approach is suggested as a starting point: