Pharma manufacturing is going through a modern-day Industrial Revolution. Three hundred years ago, machine manufacturing began to supplant a global handicraft economy.
Today, the ‘robotic revolution’ is set to have a similarly dramatic impact – and nowhere will this be felt more acutely than in pharma.
While our future robot overlords are playing a very long game, there have been recent dramatic strides in a world where perfection and uniqueness are less impactful on the bottom line than are quantity and uniformity.
Uniformity is of particular importance in the manufacture of medicines. Which of us would want to take a drug ‘a bit like’ the one we took yesterday?
It is unsurprising then that recent years have seen pharma manufacturers investing billions in robot supported production.
In 2022, Basel-based multinational pharmaceutical corporation Novartis announced a collaboration with robotic automated systems specialist Yaskawa Motoman to implement robots for automated packaging and palletising tasks, aiming to improve efficiency and safety (and one assumes, lower cost) at its manufacturing facilities.
The man machine
In 2019, American multinational pharma and medtech corporation Johnson & Johnson implemented collaborative robots (cobots) for assembly line tasks, emphasizing improved worker safety and ergonomics.
Why are these robots, and not machines? The fundamental distinction lies in their degree of autonomy. Machines are passive instruments, functioning solely through the application of external forces. Robots, however, exhibit a level of self-directed motion based on pre-programmed instructions.
This capability grants them some ability to work independently, albeit limited by their programming. The principal that one could dynamically repurpose production capabilities in response to fluctuations in demand is hugely appealing to manufacturers.
Progress, of course, does not stop there. Looking at the wider, joined up picture, pharma 4.0 (taken from industry 4.0, the fourth industrial revolution) leverages advanced technologies including AI, the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data analytics to improve pharmaceutical manufacturing processes.
This can lead to increased efficiency, better quality control, and faster development of new drugs.
And it is not enough for robots to simply manufacture now – fully autonomous, unmanned robotic pharmacies have won regulatory approval to sell over the counter medication and prescriptions while automatic sales analysis keeps stock sufficiently high.
What does the future hold? Building more decision-making capabilities into robotic production using AI will surely go hand-in-hand with development of more flexible robotic platforms.
Compared to a special purpose machine, a general-purpose robot can perform a wide range of tasks under varying, potentially unknown, conditions.
This is likely to prove particularly valuable with the rise of precision medicines, where unique drugs must be manufactured to address the specific requirements of the individual.
Tomorrow’s challenge will be the extent to which we are willing to hand over the reins of pharmaceutical manufacturing to semi-autonomous robots. To do so will require not only vast investment, but also a change in mindset regarding the role of humans in production.
Dr Joe Taylor is Principal at Candesic and Dr Leonid Shapiro is Managing Partner at Candesic. Go to candesic.com
