Asia is a region rife with exponential growth opportunities. This is no different for the healthcare industry. Factors such as increased incomes, expansion of the middle class, higher life expectancy, surge in chronic diseases, as well as growing government healthcare investments are fuelling the demand for healthcare products and services in the region. Adopting innovative technologies and going paperless is a move that manufacturers should look into in order to improve pharmaceutical processes, maintain high product quality and reduce risk.
According to BMI Research, Asia Pacific is projected to see medicine sales increase by 5% year-on-year this year, from US$305 billion to US$321 billion. Thanks to the rollout of universal healthcare, penetration of global companies and an increase of private healthcare providers, the region possesses an abundance of opportunities in the healthcare and pharmaceutical markets.
The pharmaceutical manufacturing industry, in particular, is expected to grow exponentially in the next few years. This is largely due to the fact that governments in Asia Pacific have been aggressively pushing to cultivate and grow the industry in order to boost their country’s economy.
A good example is Singapore, which has evolved into one of the most important healthcare hubs in the world, thanks to its geographic location, world-class infrastructure, skilled workforce and favourable government policy initiatives. The Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) notes that more than 30 of the world’s leading biomedical sciences companies have chosen Singapore as the key location for their manufacturing and R&D activities, and at the same time set up their regional headquarters here. This has allowed them to identify strategic business opportunities while accelerating product innovation and growth in the region.
The need to constantly remain efficient
One of the main challenges that have been observed or experienced by fast-growing pharmaceutical companies is the need to keep up with customer demands in terms of quantity, quality and immediacy. Product quality and safety are of utmost priorities, but at the same time, they have to cut costs while constantly enabling innovations in order to remain competitive.
Healthcare products have to go through highly complex and often, lengthy processes before medical practitioners and consumers can use it. In this process, all manufacturing steps have to be accurately recorded, which means there are massive costs and time required for manual documentation.
Additionally, creating and maintaining master batch records (MBRs) in a paper-based environment involves huge effort. During production, there may be issues such as human error, duplication of information due to multiple systems and unnecessary time spent to gather and input all relevant data. The review and reconciliation of this information can also be very time-consuming and subject to unforeseen mistakes.
Standardisation in the definition of the different manufacturing processes is also even more difficult because information is not always centralised. Analysis of the key performance indicators of executed batch records is possible only after the labour-intensive re-entry of data from disparate systems.
With all these challenges in mind, manufacturers need to look at adopting the right technology to enhance their production processes. Being innovative would enable them to adhere to Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) guidelines by setting and maintaining high standards of performance while reducing costs and minimising risks.
Go paperless
Electronic master batch record management with a manufacturing execution system (MES) is based on master batch record templates that are subject to automatic version management. Master batch record/electronic batch record (MBR/eBR) systems provide the ability to create standardised processes or sub-processes and facilitate their maintenance and validation.
These systems provide a framework for setting up and generating an empty eBR form for data collection during production. Then the required production parameters are distributed to the relevant systems for execution. The MES then...
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