How can we foster digital technology adoption in the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain? The role of actors’ supporting initiatives.

Digital technologies (DT) hold the potential to transform the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain (PSC), offering several benefits in patient safety, regulatory compliance, and operational efficiency. These include real-time tracking, enhanced traceability, remote medication monitoring, and optimized inventory management. Joint adoption by all PSC stakeholders is crucial to maximize these benefits, promote alignment and resilience, and ensure safe medication availability, benefiting patients and the entire supply chain ecosystem. Three technologies seem most promising in the digitalization landscape: Artificial Intelligence (AI), blockchain, and drones. AI systems are pivotal in optimizing inventory management by demand prediction, detecting fake drugs by data mining algorithms, reducing waste, and ensuring efficient logistics. Blockchain offers end-to-end visibility and traceability of drugs throughout the PSC, preventing counterfeit and non-compliant products from reaching patients. Drones can optimize drug flow management, and improve operations transparency, particularly in emergency response. Nevertheless, the PSC still lags with missing exploitation opportunities at the overall supply chain level. Barriers encountered by PSC participants include a lack of resources and digital literacy, inefficient collaboration and information sharing, and resistance to change. Moreover, despite the potential of DTs to enhance security and data management, concerns remain about data privacy and their compliance with standards and regulatory requirements. The risk associated with extensive data sharing and integration among stakeholders may impede organizations from embracing digital innovation.