Wave of Digitalization in Healthcare

In just a few months’ time, the COVID-19 crisis has brought about years of change in the way companies in all sectors and regions do business. According to a recent survey by Mckinsey & Co, responses to COVID 19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital technologies, by several years– and that many of these advances are here to stay. During the pandemic customers displayed a major shift towards online and digital channels, forcing brands to follow suit.

Digital adoption has taken a quantum leap at both the organizational and industry levels. However, the rates of developing digital products during the pandemic differ across sectors. Depending on the periods for making changes, the differences, are more visible between sectors with and without physical products than between B2B and B2C companies. Sectors such as consumer packaged goods (CPG) and automotive and assembly, for example, report relatively low levels of change in their digital-product portfolios. By contrast, the reported increases are much more significant in healthcare and pharma, financial services, and professional services, where executives report a jump nearly twice as large as those reported in CPG comanies.

Organizations are making these crisis-related changes with the long term in mind. According to the aforementioned survey, along with the multiyear acceleration of digital, the crisis has brought about a sea change in executive mindsets on the role of technology in business. Funding of digital initiatives in companies has increased more than before. Not only costs, the number of people in digital or other technology roles, and the number of customers have significantly gone up.

The Covid-19 outbreak has made explicit, at least at industrial level, several still hidden needs and emphasized other ones. Amongst them, the need for a methodology aimed at increasing resilience at factory, corporate and supply chain level is clear.

“We believe moving forward, self-reliance and digitalization will be a big part of our strategy.” commented Mahidhwaj Sisodia, EVP, Sales and Marketing, Cadila Pharmaceuticals. “We at Cadila Pharma continue to invest further in creating innovative healthcare solutions in the areas of vaccines, antibiotics and pain management, among other therapeutic areas. We are also looking at all government regulatory agencies for further alignment of their policies to support and ease the transition.”

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