Realising Pharma 4.0 and Beyond

V Venkatanarayan has 34 years of Pharma industry experience in Manufacturing operations, R & D, Custom Pharma Services (CRAMS), and Digital Transformation. He has led numerous global GMP regulatory audits successfully. As Vice President & Digital Transformation Leader at Dr. Reddy’s, he unleashes the potential of Industry 4.0 technologies for the organization. His initiatives included leveraging digitalization to extract its potential by improving cost leadership while proactively enhancing quality and reducing energy consumption, democratizing various digital enhancements. He also led a team to develop an organization-level benchmark measurement system to gauge the maturity of digital infrastructure, its utilization, and its capability (Digital Maturity Index). He has successfully led the largest formulation plant to become an “Advanced Digital Lighthouse,” enabling becoming a member of the World Economic Forum's prestigious Global lighthouse network (GLN) in October 2022. Post this, he currently heads the proliferation of digitalization initiatives across Dr. Reddy’s network of facilities.

He was featured in The Wallstreet Journal, New York edition, June 2014, in relation to pioneering automation initiatives in pharmaceutical manufacturing and in ‘Manufacturing Today’, under ‘Top 100 Plant Managers’ of India listing in 2016. He has presented as a speaker at the ‘Smart Manufacturing Summit’ for three consecutive years from 2016 to 2018, and recently in the 4th Annual Manufacturing India Summit 2022 in Mumbai, India.

Qualified as a Master in Pharmacy (M. Pharm) in Pharmaceutics, he has authored 2 research papers in pharma journals.

He has professional associations with Indian Pharmaceutical Association (IPA as Joint Secretary) and has been President, Rotary District 3130. As part of other interests, he is a faculty, APEX (Corporate) programs, Art of Living International Foundation and Board member of Art of Living Ashrams, Hyderabad, India.

Based in London, Aaron joined the EMEA Thought Leadership team in 2021. His areas of focus include the rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations globally, as well as RNA therapies as part of the wider field of emerging advanced therapies, digital health systems, and the autoimmune product landscape. He has an MEng Biomedical Engineering degree from Imperial College London.

Hugo Alexandre Ferreira is a medical doctor and physics engineer, holding a PhD in Physics on the topics of nanotechnologies applied to biomedicine. He was founder and CEO of a biosensor nanotechnology company for in vitro diagnostics, and then worked for a multinational medical device company as an in vivo imaging expert prior to returning to academia. Presently, he is a senior scientist at the Institute of Biophysics and Biomedical Engineering of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (FCUL).

He researches in medical imaging, oncology, neurosciences, brain-computer interfaces and physiological computing. He is also an associate professor and coordinator of the BSc degree in Biomedical Engineering and Biophysics at FCUL. Additionally, he has recently founded and held C-level positions at Digital Health, MedTech and SportsTech companies, using artificial intelligence, wearables, brain-computer interfaces, and VR/AR technologies for mental health and performance. Finally, he is also a founding member of the Portuguese Physiology Society.