Health Care

Today’s companies must help create a sustainable society and raise their corporate value. The healthcare industry, which includes pharmaceutical companies, is expanding access to pharmaceutical products, creating revolutionary new drugs, and addressing climate change. They are disclosing the ESG data that underpins the setting of specific targets to achieve SDG 3, “ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all.”

Companies will face calls to go beyond mere disclosures in the future. They must demonstrate the relevance of their activities and how they affect corporate value to solve social issues and raise value over the next 10-20 years. For example, their measures to improve access to pharmaceutical products will require them to deliver the right treatment at the right time to the right person, beyond geographical restrictions. They must engage in “sustainability management” to combine their social and economic value.

They must also demonstrate their social value through “impact accounting” that converts the social and environmental impacts of these activities into financial terms. Initiatives such as “human capital management” are expected to create value over the medium to long-term by focusing on critical personnel.

It is important that companies incorporate these initiatives into their own strategies and take action to solve social issues. By visualizing the social impact of their activities and disclosing them, companies must drive co-creation with stakeholders and reflect the outcomes in their subsequent endeavors.

Securing a safe and stable supply of pharmaceutical products is a critical mission of the healthcare industry, which plays a direct role in people’s lives and health. The industry has built procurements and supply networks that addresses issues of a secure supply. But addressing rising geopolitical risks to comprehensive global supply chains is a critical task. Companies must ensure the global traceability of products from the manufacturing stage to delivery to medical institutions. This is necessary to fight counterfeit drug contamination, quality degradation, and theft during the logistics process.

Partnerships with drug developers and the manufacture of investigational drugs, known as CDMOs (Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization) is expected to create new added value beyond existing frameworks.

Healthcare industry must rethink their entire supply chains, which have become complex and segmentalized, to address these issues. They must establish safe and comprehensive supply chains to put their operations on more solid foundations and enhance their entire operational processes with digital technologies such as digital twins and AI. A greater focus is being placed on initiatives at the preventative and pre-illness stages to support people’s health. The industry must also develop new initiatives that go beyond the bounds of traditional organizations and value chains through sharing and data usage that spans companies.