Operational technology for intelligent life

The Covid-19 pandemic brought healthcare and the life sciences sector to the forefront in obvious ways, from questions about hospital capacity to the search for a vaccine. There are other, lesser known aspects, however. In fact, Ireland’s life sciences sector faced a range of difficulties during the period, from shutdowns to chaotic disruption to supply chains.

Xavier de Bustos, director of life sciences and engineering, research and development, Expleo Ireland said that this was not surprising because the sector and its scale were not well understood.

“A lot of people see the life sciences sector as a single thing, but in fact it’s a big ecosystem. In Ireland, medtech, the medical devices sector, is the biggest component. You will see more about drugs from Big Pharma in export numbers, but the reality is Ireland is a huge supplier of medical devices – second only to Germany in Europe,” he said.

Mostly based around Galway, with some locations in Dublin and Cork, medtech is a major contributor to the domestic economy, with around 60 per cent of manufacturers being indigenous companies.

“They were strongly hit during Covid because hospitals shifted their focus to Covid; all ‘non urgent’ medical device surgery stopped. Basically, hospitals stopped buying some of these medical devices. The same was true of contact lenses: people stopped buying them as they were staying at home and just wore glasses,” de Bustos said.

The scale of the disruption should not be underestimated, he said.

“The one area that was not affected was the one selling the parts for the respirators. Even the drug industry, while it continued to manufacture paracetamol, drug demand for some conditions dropped,” he said.

“Unfortunately, a lot of people went undiagnosed at the height of Covid, so there were fewer patients. Even companies that were doing very well in the vaccine area were slowing down in other areas. On top of that, the industry was battling production problems and slowdowns.

“You don’t see it if you look at the export figures, but it has had a much deeper impact than people think.”

Surprisingly, given how we tend to view healthcare, and certainly medical research, as extremely high-tech affairs, de Bustos said that the medtech sector is not at the forefront of digital transformation in its own operational technology.

To some degree, and in some cases, the pandemic forced their hand in introducing new technologies, he said.

“Most of these companies are at the start of their digital transformation

They are very risk averse. But then they had a problem with workers not able to come on site and specialist workers not able to come in from other countries to maintain essential machines. Remote access with [Telepresence] augmented reality and virtual reality, they had to adopt those technologies,” he said.

If the sector is risk averse, it is for good reason: the consequences.

“The problem is they have to ensure they are compliant with regulations and that can take ages,” he said.

Nevertheless, today there is the possibility of bridging the gap between operational technology and information technology – if the right support can be found.

This support in adopting new technology can be surprisingly modest, he said, but the key is that it needs to be practical.

“The adoption of new technology for people to be assisted by a machine or to work remotely, to automate production; it’s complex and there are extremely constraining regulations. That’s why they need a support. What these businesses don’t need is the ‘big bang’ strategy, they need a step-by-step pragmatic approach,” de Bustos said.

However, this does not mean that even the simplest of technological developments should be classified as digital transformation, he said.

“In pharma, you press a button and it compresses powder and in the end you have a packet of tablets. But that’s not digital transformation. That’s just automation. Digital transformation is more about visualising the data of the process, understanding it and using it to predict maintenance issues or production challenges,” de Bustos said.

But even in this, pharma is ahead of medtech, which appears almost artisanal at times.

“It’s usually semi-automated or even manual. The plan there is to collect and use data, but the reality is, in most cases, we’re far from where we need to be,” said de Bustos.

“We try to make a roadmap based on very concrete measures. We want to show quick wins. Time to market for our clients and patients is of the essence, Covid showed that. Would we have waited ten years for a vaccine to be produced? That’s where data comes in and you don’t need to spend huge amounts of money to benefit from it.”

Behind the scenes, processes can also be improved, such as digitalisation of supply chains, which can help visualise and measure disruptive supply risk.

De Bustos is bullish on the prospect for change: adding intelligence to operational technology could unleash potential for significant growth and, he said, much greater resilience.

“The future of Ireland in life sciences and healthcare is they need to start thinking about the future: the manufacturing of the future, the hospitals of the future.

“It’s time to look at new, transformative models and not just patch up what we already do. Patients need results fast.”