Like other fields in the healthcare industry, pharmaceuticals are up for modernization. The easiest way to achieve that is through pharmaceutical software development, creating digital tools to automate and streamline pharma work. This can involve solutions that target the research of new drugs or compile testing data, as well as pharmacy management software.
Learning the full picture of pharma software development can be tricky, as it’s a sprawling industry with much potential. Today, JetBase will share some of its experience and knowledge to help you get a feel for the field. By the end of this guide, you’ll have the theoretical know-how to create your own pharmaceutical software. And if you need practical help, you know where to turn.
What is Pharmaceutical Software?
So, let’s start with a scope definition - what does the term ‘pharmaceutical software’ include? Generally, it’s any digital solution that has to do with pharmaceuticals - from their discovery to production to distribution. Even personal apps for medicine intake are considered part of the pharma software umbrella.
So, pharma software development isn’t necessarily for corporate clients. There is plenty of variety, both in the software’s purpose and the platforms you can target. Anything from desktop to mobile goes, depending on the type of project you choose to run.
The Role of Software Development in the Pharmaceutical Industry
Research shows that pharma software plays an increasingly vital role in the industry, making drug discovery and prescription management cheaper and more efficient. The varied pharmaceutical software development allows companies to accomplish multiple goals:
- Manage drug production;
- Prevent fraudulent distribution channels;
- Gather and analyze trial data for new drugs;
- Control shipments and inventory;
- Service patients with digital records.
This puts pharma software in a special position where it can help enterprises top-down, affecting starkly different departments. Nevertheless, they still fall under the same technical umbrella, and any solutions that serve pharma companies are considered pharmaceutical software.
Regulations and Standards of Pharmaceutical Software
Though they may be a valuable tool, pharma solutions aren’t above the typical legal constraints that affect the industry. Like much of the healthcare software, they are subject to HIPAA, GDPR, and similar regional legislatures. For example, the FDA regularly issues rules for specific types of pharmaceutical software according to technological advances.
So, having a legal consultant makes sense when making your own pharma solution. At least, you should work with a team that knows the field. Otherwise, you risk running into trouble even if your project is of high quality.
Pharmaceutical Software Development Statistics
As of 2024, the pharmaceutical software market is estimated at about $3.1 billion. A respectable 60.1% of that is associated with cloud solutions specifically, indicating a general trend. While some companies still opt for on-premise solutions, most are eager to go for the cloud. This opens up more processing power and higher scaling at a fraction of the cost, giving more flexibility to pharma solutions.
For the future years, the market is projected to nearly double to $5.78 billion, growing on the back of the strong pharmaceutical industry and ambitious projects. Now is a great time to try your hand at pharmaceutical software development and be part of the rising tide.
Benefits of Pharmaceutical Software Development
What makes the pharmaceutical software market so successful? One factor is definitely how valuable these solutions can be to the industry. Here is a quick rundown of what they bring to the table.
Lower Cost of Research
By relying on pharma solutions, you cut the resources you need to invest in creating new drugs. Each trial will be more efficient and the likelihood of them actually panning out into a product you can put on the market.
Faster Time-to-Market
Tying in with the previous point, pharmaceutical software makes research more effective, which also means you can deliver new goods to customers faster. Having these digital tools really reduces the wait from the moment a new drug is first discovered to the point where it’s fully tested and approved.
Easier Compliance
As you’ve already heard and will hear again in this article, compliance is crucial for the pharma industry. The software makes it less complicated to deal with, as it can establish automatic checks and alarms for any process errors.
Stronger Security
Keeping trade secrets and medical data private isn’t easy, considering how common cyberattacks are in today’s world. This is why software that encrypts data and locks it behind authentication processes is essential.
Better Patient Services
Pharmaceutical software development doesn’t just benefit businesses, as patients can also enjoy the advantages of e-prescriptions and mobile knowledge bases on drugs.
Refined Effects
While drugs can be created both with and without software, using analytical functions can help improve the medication. This can include removing side effects or strengthening positive effects.
Feedback Collection
Customer relationships go both ways, so you can give them a way to report issues with medication through the software. This way, companies spot issues faster and can act in response.
Centralizing Information
Researching medications generates a ton of data, some of it immediately usable, some - not so much. Software allows you to easily categorize, store, and bring it up when necessary.
AI-Powered Research
Some research processes can be automated or boosted with AI’s insightful control, where it can spot patterns or issues that a human wouldn’t. While that requires training your model well, the resulting boost to research results is worth it.
Better Transparency
Software grants full insight into discovery, manufacturing, and supply chain processes, letting management control them and prevent potential issues. This also prevents possible regulatory fines, as you can fix problems before they turn into major challenges.
What Software Types are Used in the Pharmaceutical Industry
As we’ve mentioned above, there’s a lot of variety in pharmaceutical software development. These are some of the key types that are popular in the industry.
Pharmaceutical ERP
Enterprise resource planning is essential to keep pharma businesses running. These solutions help structure internal processes and keep tabs on inventory and production.
Manufacturing Solutions
Software that automates drug production or helps control manufacturing equipment is essential to modern pharma companies. These solutions should help with maintenance, traceability, and scheduling.
Pharmaceutical CRM
Managing customer relationships is important to any industry that sells goods, so pharmaceutical software is no exception. It automates marketing and sales, provides customer outreach, and improves customer relations.
Supply Chain Solutions
Timely production requires having all the right materials, which can only be done with a structured, controlled supply chain. This type of pharma software helps schedule deliveries, control manufacturing, and guarantee smooth shipments.
Compliance Management
While we recommend an initial compliance consultation for pharmaceutical software development, regulations are an ongoing concern. Therefore, it’s important to have solutions that ensure full compliance with drug production and distribution standards.
Laboratory Management Systems
A drug research laboratory is the center of a pharma business, as that’s where the product is developed and refined. So, to make sure it runs smoothly and complies with regulations, an LMS helps keep tabs on its processes and structure them efficiently.
Drug Research Solutions
This includes pharmaceutical software that analyzes test trial data, simulates trial runs, or simply processes information gathered on a specific component. As a result, the time-to-market for new drugs is much lower, all thanks to a single solution.
Quality Control
As much a regulatory concern as it is just a matter of delivering a good product, QC is an indispensable part of drug production. That is why some pharmaceutical software development is dedicated entirely to it with solutions that reduce errors and prevent faulty batches.
Must-Have Features of Pharma Software
Your main goal during pharmaceutical software development is to make a feature-rich solution that creates some value for the users. Doing so is easier when you know the essentials, so let’s introduce some of the typical features of pharmaceutical solutions.
Drug Information Management
Essentially a knowledge base, this should provide information on all drugs, their components, their interactions and side effects. That way, it can help with both research and general drug use by patients.
E-Prescriptions
An easy way to provide medication to those who need it, e-prescriptions must have all standard precautions to prevent fraud. Though this will require extra work, the value proposition here is quite good, as it’s an indispensable tool for patients.
Inventory Management
This helps keep drug production on schedule with automatic re-orders of materials, supply chain management, and component tracking.
Regulatory Compliance
Good pharmaceutical software should have ways to warn companies if their practices are in breach of certain regulations and provide updates on the latest changes in the laws. This helps ensure production is modern and fully compliant with local regulations.
Patient Communication
From managing prescriptions to providing feedback on new drugs, pharma software should keep an open communication channel between patients and doctors. This reduces the cost of healthcare and increases its efficiency.
Analytics
The software should be able to help with drug research and marketing by providing in-depth analytics and processing data. This way it can help reduce time-to-market and the cost of production.
Barcode Scanner
This has a double use, as it can help patients scan their medication and learn more about it or automate packing and shipping of new drug batches.
Encryption
Protecting medical data is absolutely essential, as well as part of keeping a pharma business compliant with regulations. Implement encryption for data in transit and at rest to guarantee it’s safe.
Item Traceability
A key feature to implement with pharmaceutical software development is the ability to trace materials used in drug production. This prevents fraud and ensures supply chain transparency.
AI-Powered Trial Analysis
Another aspect that speeds up drug research is that AI helps analyze trial data much faster, eliminating test batches that aren’t working properly. It also can parse the trial information to assess what can be tweaked to improve drug quality.
Batch Control
Each produced batch must have a unified level of quality and no faulty product, something that isn’t easy to guarantee without automated oversight. The software should track all produced medications and analyze their chemical makeup as well as the sources of their raw materials.
Billing and Invoicing
Lastly, we mentioned that pharma solutions cover many purposes, and invoicing can be vital for several types of software. From billing patients for medication to automating the financial side of production and deliveries, this is a must-have for a good pharma solution.
How To Develop Pharmaceutical Software?
Now that we’ve described the crucial building blocks of pharmaceutical software and its value, it’s time to get to the main point. Here are the steps in the development process that you can follow to make a high-quality pharma solution.
Step 1. Research and Define
Set your app’s scope and essential features as you assess the market and your competitors. This should allow you to create an ambitious yet viable project. Focus on trends and analytical data to understand the market deeply.
Step 2. Consult and Comply
Make sure you have a clear understanding of relevant regulations and that your pharmaceutical software development is fully compliant with them. This can mean doing your own research or, a better option, getting some legal counseling to confirm your course of action.
Step 3. Visualize and Design
Craft a unique UI for the software with several mockups and a visual identity that reflects the software’s purpose and your brand. It’s important to keep the solution simple and the interface minimalistic and clean.
Step 4. Develop and Iterate
Implement your features and source target audience feedback on the key ones to understand if you need to tweak anything. Creating complex pharmaceutical software can sometimes mean simplifying how users interact with it to make the solution more accessible.
Step 5. Test and Polish
It’s important to ensure that your pharmaceutical software has impeccable quality, so focus on manual and automated testing. If your solution provides data processing, feed it very distinct data sets to ensure that all related functionality runs well.
Step 6. Launch and Support
Once pharmaceutical software development is done, deploy your solution and market it. It’s important to gather initial feedback and analytics to understand what can be improved. This will be your future roadmap for updates and patches.
Tech Stack Required for Pharmaceutical Software Development
The process of pharmaceutical software development brings together a slew of technologies, at least if you seek to get the best result. While every company does things according to their own skills and experience, here’s the stack that JetBase recommends for pharmaceutical software.
| Category | Technologies |
|---|---|
| Programming Languages | JavaScript, Python or Ruby |
| Web Development | HTML, CSS, React, Vue.js |
| Back-end | Nest.js, Django, Ruby on Rails or Serverless |
| Databases | PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, AuroraDb |
| Data Processing | Pandas, NumPy |
| Cloud Services | AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Containerization (Docker) |
| Security |
|
| Testing |
|
| CI/CD | Jenkins, Travis CI, GitLab CI/CD, AWS CodePipeline |
Challenges in Developing Software Solutions in the Pharmaceutical Industry
There are two core challenges we’d like to address right away, as they are the most prominent ones for all medical solutions, and pharmaceutical software development is no exception. The first is security, as handling sensitive medical data puts a lot of responsibility on a business. Implementing proper data encryption and authentication measures is paramount during pharmaceutical software development.
Second, and directly related to the first, is legal compliance. While some of this is addressed through security measures, you also need to have some extra options available. Things like allowing patients to delete or download their data may seem extraneous. But they are directly tied to GDPR requirements and must be included during pharmaceutical software development.
Another challenge that market newcomers run into is a lack of research. Without understanding current market trends, you run the risk of making a product that can’t compete. This is especially pressing in an industry that’s evolving so rapidly. Therefore, it’s vital to invest in research and analytics before you start off on pharmaceutical software development.
Real Examples Of Pharmaceutical Software in the World
It’s important to study the market and your future competitors to understand where you want to head with your own pharmaceutical software development. This section will highlight just a few popular pharma solutions that you can use for inspiration or general industry awareness.
SIMATIC SIPAT
Centered around cutting down the time it takes to get a new drug on the pharmacy shelves, this Siemens-backed project is making waves in medical research. Its core focus is reducing the chance of errors during tests and production. This pharmaceutical software ensures that not only are clinical trials completed faster, but the first batch of your drug isn’t just an “alpha version.”
Labguru
This lab management solution helps speed up trials and production by optimizing typical lab processes. As a result, you spend less time and money on each batch or new drugs. Plus, this solution increases transparency in lab work and makes its operations more straightforward. Thus, Labguru is a great example of simple but elegant pharmaceutical software development.
Oracle Clinical
An offshoot of the well-known Oracle brand, this pharmaceutical software helps with data processing, from collection to anonymization and analytics. It also organizes the actual research and lab work, making it easier to coordinate, share information, and ultimately achieve results. Clinical is a great example of a big brand doing pharmaceutical software development right.
The Future of Pharmaceutical Software
While pharmaceutical software is already quite advanced, exciting things are still to come. For one, like with many other industries, AI will likely become a driving force for new functionality. It can help make analytics more efficient and precise while automating managerial tasks and customer support.
On a similar note, as security is vital for pharmaceutical software, as with any medical solution, blockchain could possibly help keep medical records safe. Companies can spot unwarranted access or track possible issues with immutable logs of every action. In general, focusing on security will probably become the new norm, as scandals around data leaks can destroy a company’s reputation.
Lastly, an emphasis on IoT integrations for more structured data collection and app pairing can only become more widespread. As wearable smart devices become more common, this direction gains new value for pharmaceutical software.
Create Pharma Software with JetBase
With so much promise both in the current industry and in its coming years, you’re likely itching to start pharmaceutical software development. However, as we’ve illustrated, there’s a lot to keep track of if you want to make a truly high-grade solution. From building essential features to following regulatory restrictions, navigating this industry can be tricky for a first-time team.
Thankfully, you can always turn to JetBase, a company that’s spent more than a decade refining our skills in custom software development. We have extensive experience in the medical industry with web and mobile apps, as well as telemedicine solutions. Plus, our devs have a passion for pursuing challenging projects and new technologies.
All of the above makes us the perfect team for pharmaceutical software development. JetBase prides itself on quality and efficiency, delivering projects on time and with extra polish. If you’d like to see our skills in action, simply get in touch, and let’s schedule a consultation.
