A Critical Evaluation of the Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Enhancing Transparency, Efficiency, and Traceability in the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain.

The research was designed to analyse the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in enhancing traceability, transparency and efficiency in the pharmaceutical supply chain network. Achieving this required the review of relevant industry and academic literature to retrieve secondary quantitative and qualitative data by adopting parallel methodology. During the research, it was observed that there is limited information to evaluate the sustained impact of integrating AI in the pharmaceutical supply chain to justify its high cost. Additionally, there is a need to have a standard metric for measuring the positive impact of utilising AI in manufacturing, purchasing, transportation, storage, and delivery in the pharmaceutical supply chain. The triple bottom line concept was used to access the impact of AI on sustainability, and it was identified that organizations which use AI can utilize the analysed data to make key decisions on supplier selection, authenticate the source of raw materials, configure, and design their supply chain networks in a sustainable manner. In doing this, there will be a positive impact on the environment, through ethical sourcing, the people, because counterfeit drugs will be eliminated, original drugs will be available when needed, and profitability for organisations through reduced cost and enhanced productivity. Furthermore, it was identified that using AI ensures there is a continuous flow of essential medicines using the continuous flow model, in an agile and lean way while eliminating supply chain variability. Finally, it was established that integrating AI in the pharmaceutical supply chain is essential because it will revolutionize and optimize the entire system. Therefore, organizations should invest in AI and human capital development so people with the requisite skills can manage the pharmaceutical supply chain systems.