The Necessity of One, the Benefit of Many: Bridging the Gap between Industry and Academia_Essay by Vivek Ghate

With a growing world scenario, comes athirst to grow among others. As the society makes progress onto a leading democracy: institutions, industries, and residential complexes begin to appear. Adding on to this are the initiatives taken by the Government in digitalizing the day to day activities. Education and academic institutions have grown over decades to unimaginable heights and produce more number of highly qualified individuals. They are then let out into the free world to hunt for a job matching their profiles and settle as a whole. However, Industries and other job providers try to filter out the real bunch of candidates into countable few who can work for them and aid in their potential growth. As the case with other fields, the pharmaceutical sector is no exception. In fact, it is now the most sorted and broadly competitive field requiring a sufficiently skilled and specific domain experts to take control of the global health concern. That being said, the education system is developing along with baby-boomers and branded pharmaceutical industries appointing the qualified where does the actual problem arise?

Though the educational qualification is the prerequisite for getting a job in the pharmaceutical sector, Industry doesn’t appoint people without high caliber for well-paid posts which is mainly because industry and academia are both independent and different in their own ways. Academicians have an entirely different focus on working and growth in sufficient contrast to the industry despite both being in the same field of interest. Academicians are majorly centered on to a much static curriculum and mindsets so as to obtain recognition while moving on to novel systems of drug delivery with a lesser idea regarding the cost during the scale-up. Industrialists, on the other hand, have more dynamic and changing applications well grounded into the mindsets to obtain a self-sustained, minimal cost and risk product to make them a global player.

Speaking of pharma sector, the main problem arises in the academic curriculum. The research is progressed in making newer and newer delivery systems with decorations and size reduction. But, no industry wants to look into the produced samples! This happens because the industry is trying to manage the rapidly transforming capital markets and economy. The processes made in an academic backdrop shows poor translation into the clinical aspects due to scale up problems, stability issues and clinical intolerance and adverse effects. Academicians on the peak of the novel formulations do not work in the well accepted conventional delivery systems like the tablets or capsules. They forbid themselves from getting a functional product by satisfying themselves with a large number of publications lying in the pages of their library. In the process of pure novelty unguided by the actual scenario, end up making highly expensive and unreliable formulations for an already existing cheap medication in the market. Academia has lost its luster due to the award of more and more degrees and once in a blue moon changing the curriculum. Industry approaches the high-profile academic institutions during the time of their need and consults a few well-known people they are comfortable with. Once an industry does this, others will follow which result in the monopoly of the said academic institution to attract all the possible funding and projects leaving the less fortunate schools where they are. Industry displays and tries to solve their formulation, active ingredient or any other problem internally in most of the cases. A small part of this would also relate to the patentability and intellectual property rights on the developed product.

The above problems and oppositely poled academic and industry seem never ending. In a digital world we live in, the solution is mere with a click of a mouse button. To be precise, a left click of the mouse! Yes, the online education system has seen tremendous growth in the last few years. Giants like the Harvard, Cambridge, and IITs to name a few have taken a step to provide paid and free courses to enthusiastic entrepreneurs to aid them in understanding the topic better and make the most of their time in hand. However, a very few pharmaceutical industries have taken the lead. The bridging of the gap between the academia and industry to a certain extent can be made only by the mode of online education. As estimated by several leading surveys an average adult human being spends about 4 hours in fronts of digital devices like the computer and laptops. An exciting yet highly precise data is that Google records around 3.5 billion searches per day. Academicians and general public move towards the search engines to find protocols, methods and recent innovation in their fields and to gain knowledge. Providing online education and recognition of achieving with problem solving and grades will allow for a better opportunity to disseminate knowledge. Industrial sponsored teaching and courses will attract many individuals from the academic who will be benefited while helping the provider. Being a major player in the market, mobile phones have the capacity to educate almost all the sectors of the society. If utilized to its fullest, industry may not have to wait years to get their product related problems solved by the academia.

The industry could shed some of its knowledge in the form of online documentaries, theories, little information’s and also indicate what methods were taken to overcome the problems and the likely-to-be interesting research. Academicians could connect with the industries, allow them to take and give suggestions and interactivity as a plus point to make students understand better.The industry should also provide for an efficient online course in the field of project management and interview and other related matters to help the student to grab his dream job. The industry should partner with the academic sector and allow for the use of online education in their curriculum. Several pharmaceutical industries are not well developed in the home country, in which cases it could be beneficial to the academicians interested in working in new diseases to engage themselves in the learning of the methodologies and currently available expertise in the area. The industry should focus on the practical applicability of the theories in the book and guide the academia as to what the global health care sector needs.

The government in several countries have already initiated and support the online courses and education systems. The need of the hour is the development of a proper secure network between the academia and industry to overcome the gaps existing between them. This progress will facilitate the match and relevance of the academic programs with the necessity of the industry which in turn is reflecting the need of the health care segment of the society.

We are presenting the series of essays submitted for the 1st Annual Pharma Literati Essay contest. The opinions in the essay are by the authors and need to be endorsed by Pharma Literati team.