Prescription: Technology

NG Pharma speaks with HP’s David Medina to find out how IT can help the life science and pharma industry face some of today’s biggest challenges.

“The most pressing challenge that these new technologies pose to the industry is around the management of huge data sets”
-David Medina

Modern life science research is largely a function of traditional research techniques. However, the advent of the genomic revolution has brought with it a raft of new data sources and types, such as DNA sequencing, genomics, proteomics, imaging and even sociological data that have now become a critical part of research. As a result, successful life science research has increased its dependence on information technology.

What role does information technology play in a life science organization's strategy to improve the efficiency of the drug discovery and development process?

David Medina. IT is an extremely important element in the biopharmaceutical industry's quest to improve the efficiency of drug discovery and development. In addition to reducing IT costs, pharma CIO's are being asked to bring the power of information technology to bear on the business issues faced by the industry. Information technology has been applied to many of the problems faced in conducting clinical trials. Electronic Data Capture has had a rapid uptake due to its ability to speed the process of gathering and analyzing clinical trial data during the conduct of the trial rather than waiting for the end of the trial to review and clean-up all the data related issues. Of course, IT has also had an essential role in collaboration, analytics and data gathering required during the discovery process. From target search, through processes such as HTS and HCS, the role of high performance computing as absolutely critical to the success of drug discovery. There is also an oncoming tsunami of data resulting from the application of the latest life science research methodologies. Cost-effective, properly applied IT will be required to manage these data sets.

How do you envision information technology being used to stimulate collaboration between life science organizations and the rest of the healthcare ecosystem (providers, payers, etc.)?

DM. Effective collaboration must cut across the boundaries of each member of the healthcare ecosystem. This entails sharing information and processes in a seamless fashion both within and between enterprises. Technologies such as Service Oriented Architecture offer healthcare ecosystem the opportunity to share data and link processes. For example, initiatives such as caBIG use this approach to enable interoperability between organizations involved in cancer research. IT technology will also allow different organizations to collaborate on common processes and develop knowledge networks with individuals regardless of organizational boundaries. Thin-client technologies also offer organizations the ability to securely collaborate on research projects irrespective of their location, providing virtual access to the resources they need for effective data and process sharing. Cloud computing also offers possibilities not yet imagined to enhance collaboration across the healthcare ecosystem.

There has been much discussion about the impact of next generation sequencing and other high data rate instrumentation in the field of life science research. What do you see as the challenges to industry from these new developments in the field of life science research?

DM. The most pressing challenge that these new technologies pose to the industry is around management of the huge data sets that these instruments will churn out. When this is coupled with an evolving business and regulatory environment that is also driving longer retention periods for data, one can see that the costs for storage will grow as well as the need for new technologies and techniques that can effectively manage and analyze this research data. The follow on set of challenges will revolve around the efforts to aggregate these data with clinical and other types of life science data in order to gain the highly sought after insights upon which the advancement of the life sciences depend. These challenges include everything from high contact data management to the tricky issues around semantic interoperability between dissimilar systems, including both data and controlled vocabularies.

David Medina is Worldwide Life Science and Pharma Segment Executive for HP. He is experienced in helping companies bring drug and device products to market, has held leadership positions with Quintiles Consulting (Regulatory Affairs Certification), Medical Manager, Confer Software and Dianon Systems and is a member of the CDISC Advisory Board.