Impact of IoT on the Healthcare Producers: Epitomizing Pharmaceutical Drug Discovery Process

Abstract

Internet of things (IoT) emerged as a promising technology in the last decade and predicted to be ascendant in the next. Its application in the producer side of the healthcare industry is still in the nascent stage but expected to increase mani fold in the near future. The purpose of this chapter is twofold; first, illuminate on the IoT applications on the pharmaceutical manufacturing and supply chain practices with real examples, and second elaborate the wide avenue of the opportunity of IoT it has in the drug discovery. Where most of the previous works argue the prospect of IoT in the conceptual or theoretical manner, we, however, intend to show the utility of automatic information processing in the context of computational drug design, which is an integral part of the drug discovery process. We integrate quantitative structure relationships with activity (QSAR), property (QSPR), and toxicity (QSTR) by utilizing an optimization technique to come up with a combined decision model. Numerical analysis has been performed with the developed optimization model con sidering three different cases using a simple chemical structure to test the model. Results suggest that the developed mathematical model can successfully be able to integrate QSAR, QSPR, and QSTR parameters which in terms of aid in automatic information and data capturing and lessen human efforts. This automatization can help in generating “optimal” drug candidates by considering all necessary facets. The present chapter also discusses other aspects of the healthcare producers where IoT can be proven beneficial in the near future