What kind of effect does automation have on your job as Regulatory or Pharmacovigilance professional?

Nowadays you can hear about automation even in the grocery near to your home. Accountants, brokers, cashiers, taxi and truck drivers, lawyers can read articles about fast growing start-ups which are planning take their jobs via automation.

But somehow our field as regulatory and pharmacovigilance professional looks safer. We are communicating with local offices, external partners, and authorities on daily basis. We have complex process with decision points which can not made by computers, right?

Be honest to yourself and think about your daily tasks. How many documents are linked from one system to the other by you? Are you spending time for cover letter writing when you mainly copy/paste information from you internal system? How much of your working hours do you spend for tasks like this?

According to my experience 30% is the lowest rate. This could mean that 30% of the workers on our field can lose their job if companies could solve all issues around automation. Furthermore I know personally at least 2-3 solutions which could do the above listed tasks without changing your current IT system.

I don’t want to advertise any company here, so just google for Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and you will see many solutions.

For the first glance it can seems scary. Will you loose your job?

I have some insight to RPA solutions so I would say probably you won’t. You will need to change your approach, but you have every chance that you can keep it.

In my following articles I will give you deeper insight to RPA solutions and answer to the following questions:
1. What are the biggest challenges which need to be solved before a company can introduce RPA?
2. How will regulatory/pharmacovigilance RPA look when it will be introduced?
3. What will be your role in an RPA using company as regulatory/pharmacovigilance professional?