It is a sector with some encouraging progress but one that still faces some serious challenges. The first is the continued shortage of skills. With rapid technical change, the skills of the workforce have had to upgrade quickly. But it is not clear that the education system has kept up.
Moreover, the regulatory environment can create barriers. The UK has a well-established framework to ensure safety and efficacy, but the regulatory pathways themselves are time-consuming and expensive, especially for small companies that might not be able to run those processes well.
Moreover, geopolitical events and larger competition pose external hazards, and it is more important than ever to possess a resilient manufacturing strategy that can confront such pressures.
Furthermore, the rising requirement of targeted medicines and ‘personalised’ medicine also offers both opportunity and challenge to the hi-tech UK API economy. As the market is showing an upward trend towards more targeted solutions, companies have to innovate even more faster to satisfy this new trend. To conduct this, alongside with the technological capacities of research and implementation, they need an expertise in patients’ needs and expectations. The application of artificial intelligence and machine learning into the innovation process of drugs is an example of efforts that the firms are currently taking to help them harmonise these different demands, as well as those of regulators. This strategy, however, requires workforce highly endowed with sufficient skill in these new technological fields.
Moreover, the sustainability of the production processes becomes more pressing. Environmental regulations are tightening and there is an increasing public awareness of environmental issues. The industry is having to deal with the issue of making their manufacturing processes greener. There will be an investment needed in new technologies and there is a corporate social responsibility to adopt practices with a smaller carbon footprint. Companies are increasingly being responsible for their carbon footprint by focusing on using more bioprocessing and reduction of waste practices, some of which – such as the reduction of chemical use – can aid in competitive edge. For more information you can click here https://highforceresearch.com/.
