The Impact of the Pandemic on the Advancement of Data Interoperability, Drug Development

Pharmacy Times interviewed Shreejit Nair, senior vice president and life sciences market business lead at CitiusTech, on how data interoperability can be enhanced within pharmacy and health systems to improve health care outcomes.

During the interview, Nair explained what the impact of the pandemic has been on the advancement of data interoperability in health care.

“As we went through our experiences over the last 2 years with our customers, one of the things that we noticed was that there is a significant amount of focus on furthering research and doing it in a very, very quick manner,” Nair said. “The whole concept of drug development is no longer in years—actually, it's been crunched into months.”

As an example, Nair explained that the COVID-19 vaccine had a drug life cycle that was approximately 9 months in total.

“From the time COVID-19 hit all of us to the time we got [the vaccine] out there for the first patient—it was probably 9 or 10 months,” Nair said. “This is remarkable because you're comparing this against 8 or 9 years.”

Additionally, Nair addressed how the current digital health care boom may lead to further advancements in care throughout the US health care system.