The Future of Personalized Medicine

In a video interview with Pharma Commerce, Alex Guillen, global pharma and life sciences director at Tive, highlights a significant concern: the rapid advancement of technology and its potential misuse by organized crime. While technology itself is not inherently dangerous, the pharma industry's slow adoption of emerging tech, such as IoT devices, sensors, and cloud-based integration, has made it vulnerable. Guillen points out that other industries have embraced these technologies much faster, enhancing their security and efficiency, while the pharma sector has lagged behind.

This technological lag creates a critical vulnerability for pharmaceutical companies, especially in supply chain management, where the risk of cyberattacks and system breaches is growing. The fast pace of technological development, coupled with the industry's lack of preparedness to defend against these threats, makes pharma particularly susceptible to malicious activities, including hacking and data manipulation. Guillen emphasizes that the industry's relatively slow uptake of advanced technologies like IoT and cloud computing has left them exposed to potential risks, especially from organized criminal groups leveraging these tools for nefarious purposes.

Ultimately, Guillen suggests that the key challenge for the pharma industry moving forward will be to rapidly enhance its technological capabilities and adopt a more proactive approach to security. By doing so, pharma companies can better protect themselves against the evolving landscape of threats, ensuring that their supply chains remain secure and resilient in the face of these emerging risks.

Guillen also comments on a 2024 report surrounding pharma supply chain security and visibility, what needs to be done in the United States to increase manufacturing output, and much more.

A transcript of his conversation with PC can be found below.

PC: How will the development of technology, especially personalized medicine, help in further strengthening the pharma supply chain? Is it scalable?

Guillen: For the pharma logistics industry—including the biotech supply chain—I am personally involved in about four projects. They are global projects to try to build this. In terms of some of the developments that I see in terms of manufacturing close to the patient, if you will see them, Nico, you will think that we’re in science fiction movie. We're going from a huge plant with 800 people working on some type of therapeutical drugs, to machines that are the size of a printer, which actually looks like magic. You put stuff in, and stuff comes out, and it looks like magic.

There’s a big investment right now on this type of manufacturing at very small scale. And of course, there are some questions. Is it scalable? Can we do this eventually? I think that if we have a lot of small machines, it is scalable. If we have a few small machines, it's not, but I think that we are working quite fast. I think in the next 20 years, it will be a completely different world.