Pharmaceutical

The pharmaceutical industry is defined as the discovery, development, and manufacture of drugs and medications. It's widespread, including research, chemicals, and the regulation and involvement of government agencies (globaledge.msu.edu)

  • $77,379 Average salary
  • 53.9% Of Men Make Up This Industry
  • 46.1% Of Women Make Up This Industry
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History & Future

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Future

Pharmacists will be able to take on a role similar to a physician, and use AI to complement their consulting work. Pharmacists will be able to operate as care providers and advise patients on their medical conditions while delegating administrative tasks like the collection of medications to AI-powered machines. In the future, however, self-serve pharmacies are more likely to become even more technologically advanced. This could look like patients being given a prescription by their doctor, often with a QR code, and then taking this to a participating self-service pharmacy.

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History

The modern pharmaceutical industry traces its origin to two sources: apothecaries that moved into wholesale production of drugs such as morphine, quinine, and strychnine in the middle of the 19th century and dye and chemical companies that established research labs and discovered medical applications for their products starting in the 1880s. The middle third of the 20th century witnessed a blossoming of pharmaceutical invention, with breakthroughs in the development of synthetic vitamins, sulfonamides, antibiotics, hormones (thyroxine, oxytocin, corticosteroids, and others), psychotropics, antihistamines, and new vaccines. Several of these constituted entirely new classes of medicines. Deaths in infancy were cut in half, while maternal deaths from infections during childbirth declined by more than 90%. Illnesses such as tuberculosis, diphtheria, and pneumonia could be treated and cured for the first time in human history