23rd February 2017, GTC Advisors – Big Pharma and the Cloud
GTC Advisors is a 100% Independent, privately owned Boutique Investment Advisory Firm offering services to retail, corporate and high net worth individuals.
GENEVA - Feb. 23, 2017 - PRLog -- With the US markets continuing to strengthen, today we take a look at one of the more interesting sectors, Biotechnology or the Pharmaceuticals Industry, more specifically how technology is speeding up the process of bringing cheaper drugs to market.
Below is an extract of a recent article, giving key areas of benefit that the sector is seeing by utilizing the cloud.
Developing a drug from a promising molecule to a potential life-saver can take more than a decade and cost billions of dollars.
Speeding this process up - without compromising on safety or efficacy - would seem to be in everyone's interests.
And cloud computing is helping to do just that.
"Cloud platforms are globally accessible and easily available," says Kevin Julian, managing director at Accenture Life Sciences, Accelerated R&D Services division.
"This allows for real-time collection of data from around the world, providing better access to data from inside life sciences companies, as well as from the many partners they work with in the drug development process."
Clinical trials - testing how a new drug works on people once you've tested it on animals - are a crucial part of this process. But they can be very complex to organise and run.
There are three main phases, starting with a small group of healthy volunteers, then widening out to larger groups who would benefit from the drug.
"A big phase three trial will cost anything from $30m-$60m (£24m-£48m)
These trials may be conducted over 30 to 50 countries and involve hundreds or even thousands of patients - this takes a lot of time and money.
Patient recruitment has always been the number one problem," says Mr Rosenberg.
And as drug development targets more specific groups of people, largely thanks to the insights coming from genomics, finding the right patients for such clinical studies is becoming even harder.
This is where the cloud can help.
"With cloud and related technologies, we are now able to mine real-world data to find patient populations better, and utilise globally available technology to conduct trials in an even more distributed and inclusive manner," says Mr Julian.
Saving time
Cloud and increasing digitalisation is also helping to improve the efficiency of data collection and analysis.
"Data collection used to be very inefficient, with data being written on paper forms, faxed and then entered into computers manually," explains Tarek Sherif, co-founder and chief executive of Medidata, a company that has developed a cloud platform for clinical trials.
"Then it had to be double-checked for errors. It could take up to a year before you could draw any conclusions from the patient data."
Digitising the process and automating the checking process in the cloud has reduced this time to "one to two weeks," says Mr Sherif.
And cloud offers many additional advantages to pharma companies, says Mr Rosenberg.
"These days health data is coming from a wide variety of sources, like labs, wearable devices, electronic diaries, health records. Pharma companies can't necessarily handle all the data that's coming in to them.
"So cloud computing helps them do that and gives them a whole bunch of other advantages - the technology is kept up to date, you get the latest security, the latest features and so on."
A spokesman for pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) told the BBC: "Advances in computing and data analytics are providing new opportunities to improve the efficiency of our research and increase our understanding of a disease or a patient's response to medication."
Speeding up the clinical trial process also cuts costs.
"We were able to save one of our clients about 30% on the cost of running a trial," says Mr Sherif, whose firm facilitates nearly half of all clinical trials in the world and counts 17 of the top 25 pharma companies as clients.
And Accenture's Mr Julian says: "We've seen overall savings of 50% - in some cases up to 75% - on the historically labour-intensive parts of the drug development process."
Of course, not all prospective drugs work, or they're shown to work but not any better than existing drugs on the market.
"So the Holy Grail is to fail faster so you're not failing in the very final phases of drug development when you've already spent most of your money," says Mr Sherif.
While both the technology and pharmaceutical industry continue to make leaps and bounds it is in essence, a fantastic opportunity for one sector to push the boundaries of another. At GTC we expect the Pharma sector to continue to gain over the course of the year, benefitting from the positive policy changes expected from the new government.
GTC Advisors prides itself in offering a truly global financial service. Our ability to provide a wide range of independent financial advice incorporating multiple sectors, markets and demographics is key to retaining clients and nurturing new relationships. It is our mission to support our clients in every aspect of their financial strategy that sets us apart from the competition.
Contact an advisor today for a free consultation at www.gtc-advisors.com
Below is an extract of a recent article, giving key areas of benefit that the sector is seeing by utilizing the cloud.
Developing a drug from a promising molecule to a potential life-saver can take more than a decade and cost billions of dollars.
Speeding this process up - without compromising on safety or efficacy - would seem to be in everyone's interests.
And cloud computing is helping to do just that.
"Cloud platforms are globally accessible and easily available," says Kevin Julian, managing director at Accenture Life Sciences, Accelerated R&D Services division.
"This allows for real-time collection of data from around the world, providing better access to data from inside life sciences companies, as well as from the many partners they work with in the drug development process."
Clinical trials - testing how a new drug works on people once you've tested it on animals - are a crucial part of this process. But they can be very complex to organise and run.
There are three main phases, starting with a small group of healthy volunteers, then widening out to larger groups who would benefit from the drug.
"A big phase three trial will cost anything from $30m-$60m (£24m-£48m)
These trials may be conducted over 30 to 50 countries and involve hundreds or even thousands of patients - this takes a lot of time and money.
Patient recruitment has always been the number one problem," says Mr Rosenberg.
And as drug development targets more specific groups of people, largely thanks to the insights coming from genomics, finding the right patients for such clinical studies is becoming even harder.
This is where the cloud can help.
"With cloud and related technologies, we are now able to mine real-world data to find patient populations better, and utilise globally available technology to conduct trials in an even more distributed and inclusive manner," says Mr Julian.
Saving time
Cloud and increasing digitalisation is also helping to improve the efficiency of data collection and analysis.
"Data collection used to be very inefficient, with data being written on paper forms, faxed and then entered into computers manually," explains Tarek Sherif, co-founder and chief executive of Medidata, a company that has developed a cloud platform for clinical trials.
"Then it had to be double-checked for errors. It could take up to a year before you could draw any conclusions from the patient data."
Digitising the process and automating the checking process in the cloud has reduced this time to "one to two weeks," says Mr Sherif.
And cloud offers many additional advantages to pharma companies, says Mr Rosenberg.
"These days health data is coming from a wide variety of sources, like labs, wearable devices, electronic diaries, health records. Pharma companies can't necessarily handle all the data that's coming in to them.
"So cloud computing helps them do that and gives them a whole bunch of other advantages - the technology is kept up to date, you get the latest security, the latest features and so on."
A spokesman for pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) told the BBC: "Advances in computing and data analytics are providing new opportunities to improve the efficiency of our research and increase our understanding of a disease or a patient's response to medication."
Speeding up the clinical trial process also cuts costs.
"We were able to save one of our clients about 30% on the cost of running a trial," says Mr Sherif, whose firm facilitates nearly half of all clinical trials in the world and counts 17 of the top 25 pharma companies as clients.
And Accenture's Mr Julian says: "We've seen overall savings of 50% - in some cases up to 75% - on the historically labour-intensive parts of the drug development process."
Of course, not all prospective drugs work, or they're shown to work but not any better than existing drugs on the market.
"So the Holy Grail is to fail faster so you're not failing in the very final phases of drug development when you've already spent most of your money," says Mr Sherif.
While both the technology and pharmaceutical industry continue to make leaps and bounds it is in essence, a fantastic opportunity for one sector to push the boundaries of another. At GTC we expect the Pharma sector to continue to gain over the course of the year, benefitting from the positive policy changes expected from the new government.
GTC Advisors prides itself in offering a truly global financial service. Our ability to provide a wide range of independent financial advice incorporating multiple sectors, markets and demographics is key to retaining clients and nurturing new relationships. It is our mission to support our clients in every aspect of their financial strategy that sets us apart from the competition.
Contact an advisor today for a free consultation at www.gtc-advisors.com
End
| Tags | : | GTC Advisors Europe, Big Pharma Cloud Tech, US Markets News |
|---|---|---|
| Industry | : | Financial |
| Location | : | Geneva - Geneva - Switzerland |