Healthcare information technology is the area of information technology system involving the design, development, creation, use and maintenance of information system approaches to improve public health, medical care, lower cost, increase efficiency, reduce errors and improve patient satisfaction for the healthcare industry. These include uses of data analytics, artificial intelligence, cognitive computing and many others to effectively manage patient health management programs, development of new therapies and drugs, efficient aggregation and analysis of patient information.

The main advantage of novel drug delivery system is providing the drug to the target site in a controlled manner for enhanced efficacy with less side effects. It follows two approaches one is spatial drug delivery which involves targeting a drug to a particular organ or tissue and another one is temporal drug delivery. In this the rate of the drug delivery to the target tissue is controlled by various techniques.

Bioavailability can be referred to as the rate and extent to which active ingredient or active element of the drug product is absorbed and becomes available at the site of action. The extent and rate of drug absorption are usually measured by the area under the blood or plasma concentration-time curve (AUC) and the maximum concentration (Cmax), respectively. For drug products that are not planned to be absorbed into bloodstream, their bioavailability may be assessed by measurements intended to reflect the rate and extent to which the active moiety of the drug product is absorbed and becomes available at the site of action.Bioequivalence: When two drug products or two formulations of the same drug provide the same therapeutic effect, they are said to be bioequivalent, or, that they are therapeutically equivalent. It means, their rates and extent of absorptions do not reflect a significant difference at the site of action.

Clinical pharmacy and pharmacy practice play important roles in clinical trials and clinical research. In recent years pharmacist role in clinical research and patient care has improved significantly and they play active role in designing and modifying drug therapies. This session focuses on the recent advancements in clinical research and pharmacy practice.

Pharmacogenetics/pharmacogenomics can assist the physicians achieve the target of personalized medicine. Personalized medicine will come to mean not just the right drug for the right individual, but the right drug for the specific infection disease influence a specific individual. It is a major challenge in current clinical practice, drug development, and drug regulation. For more than 5 decades, studies of pharmacogenetics have provided ample examples of causal relations between genotypes and drug response to account for phenotypic variations of clinical importance in drug therapy.

Pharmacoepidemiology is that the study of applied medication and effects in massive numbers of people. It provides an estimate of the beneficial drug effect and an estimate of adverse drug effect in a population. It is said to be a combination of Clinical Pharmacology and Epidemiology. It entirely deals with the calculation on Genetic Variation of drug effect, duration-response relationships, clinical effects of drug-drug interactions, and the effects of medication non-adherence.

The pharmaceutical industry is directly impacted by the research conducted with prescription drugs, vaccines, and OTC drugs being manufactured based on findings from the study of life sciences. Clinical trials are conducted to ensure that products being developed are tested on how well they work on individuals affected by the diseases or conditions they are created to treat. Pharmacology has evolved as a multi-disciplinary science with many subspecialties including clinical pharmacology, cardiovascular pharmacology, behavioral pharmacology, neuropsychopharmacology, pharmacogenetics, and Pharmacoeconomics.

Toxicology is the scientific study of adverse effects that occur in living organisms due to chemicals. It involves observing and reporting symptoms, mechanisms, detection and treatments of toxic substances, in particular relation to the poisoning of humans. The relationship between dose and its effects on the exposed organism is of high significance in toxicology. Factors that influence chemical toxicity include the dosage, duration of exposure (whether it is acute or chronic), route of exposure, species, age, sex, and environment.

Pharmaceutical manufacturing is the procedure of pharmaceutical drugs by pharmaceutical manufacturing companies. It is under constant pressure to fast-track innovation and increase the speed at which they introduce successful drugs to market. The days of big pharmaceutical companies owning many manufacturing plants are slowly ending, and every company, no matter what size, is looking for ways to lessen costs to survive in an increasingly tough and unpredictable economic climate.

Pharmacoeconomics is analysed as a part of decision processes at several stages of drug development and drug marketing. Greater challenges in decision-making coupled with improvements in the techniques of pharmacoeconomic research point to a greater role for pharmacoeconomics into the new millennium. This in turn will have consequences for companies in the pharmaceutical industry.

Digital marketing will be the next frontier for pharmaceutical companies as many of them are scaling up their consumer businesses and introducing an array of consumer brands. Traditionally, marketing innovation in the pharmaceutical industry has been stunted by heavy regulatory restrictions. Historically, pharmaceutical companies have had little to no interaction with their end-users-patients-since they depended entirely on their health care providers for medical knowledge and advice. The $17 billion pharmaceutical industry is currently undergoing a digital wave. The pharma industry’s marketing spends through digital platforms is estimated to shoot up nearly 50% in the next two years to touch Rs 220 crore, Bengaluru-based market research firm Indegene’s study shows. (Source-ET) Smartphone apps and social media are predicted to be the biggest players in this growth. This means that, whether brands like it or not, they will have to indulge in digital marketing sooner or later. And if they don’t, they will inevitably be wiped out from the competition.

One must not disregard that the increasing internet usage is not merely for the purpose of socializing online, but rather in search of solutions for their problems or queries. In fact, searching for health related information is the third most common activity done on the internet. Patients these days are no longer play a passive role when it comes to medical consultation. Due to the advent of internet, people prefer to conduct a brief research on the type of drug preferred by a physician, its side-effects etc. Hence, digital marketing for pharma sector can increase trust and brand loyalty as consumers like to be addressed, informed and supported when it comes to their health.

R&D has traditionally been and will continue to be (probably even more) crucial for the growth and future success of research-based pharma companies. The pharmaceutical industry has now entered a period of significant uncertainty and transition characterized by higher R&D costs, depleted pipelines and financial restriction to perform innovative research. The global credit crunch exacerbates all this with more and more layoffs and research budget cuts; but major crisis can sometimes produce major opportunities. New business models such as open innovation may help solve the so-called pharmaceutical ‘productivity paradox’ via the sharing of risk, cost and intellectual property through R&D strategic alliances involving all kind of innovators, such as pharmaceutical, biotechnology, academic drug-discovery centers and clinical research organisations.