Enhancing generic pharmaceutical supply chain resilience through advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs)

Keystone expert Rena Conti, Dean’s research scholar and associate professor at Boston University, and her research partners recently published results from their one-year pilot study on how analytics can inform national technology strategy in biopharmaceuticals.

This pilot, known as the National Network for Critical Technology Assessment (NNCTA), was funded by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Technology Innovation and Partnerships (TIP) and aims to bring together leading scholars to identify societal, national, and geostrategic challenges facing the United States and opportunities for investments in technologies that can help address these challenges.

Conti and her team focus on the United States’ vulnerability to supply chain resilience deficits in drug manufacturing, which problematically leads to drug shortages. They identify how advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs), such as continuous and modular manufacturing, can enhance supply chain resilience for generic drugs, which face the compound headwinds of high supply chain vulnerabilities and low likelihood to explore AMTs due to lack of economic incentives.

The full report includes studies that span across artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and biopharmaceuticals, and will ultimately inform the United States’ national technology strategy and allocation of federal funding. You can download Rena’s biopharmaceuticals section here and read her framework for prioritizing drug supply chains here.

For more information on Rena, please see below:

Rena M. Conti
Associate Professor, Markets, Public Policy, and Law
Questrom School of Business, Boston University
Follow: @contirena1