CLOUD COMPUTING - Enabling Better Collaboration in the Cloud

INTRODUCTION

In the laboratories of today’s pharmaceutical companies, pressure is building – pressure to develop drugs faster and cheaper; to comply with stringent security and compliance requirements; and to maximize the expertise of colleagues across time zones and geographies. At the same time, there is growing pressure to properly optimize, manage, transfer, store, and protect the vast quantities of data that are being created. In fact, many life sciences companies need tens of thousands of gigabytes of data for experimental runs.

Increasingly, pharmaceutical companies have steered clear of conducting drug research entirely in-house, preferring to work with a constellation of partners, such as CROs, small biotech firms, and academic groups to advance research and development breakthroughs. However, this collaborative approach requires a new way of working.

The pharmaceutical industry has reached a crucial inflection point, requiring access to new working methods and tools. But where should the pharmaceutical industry look for answers to these real-world challenges? The answer is simple – the cloud.

THE CHALLENGE

A key goal for pharmaceutical companies is to be able to identify successful and innovative drug compounds that will make it to the market as quickly as possible, as well as identify those that are likely to fail. Additionally, as the development of new clinical products becomes more complex, government compliance regulations have become increasingly complicated as well. With shrinking drug pipelines and evercomplicated regulations to follow, companies are investing in better collaboration, standardization, and analytical tools to improve R&D productivity, as well as their sales and marketing operations.

As the market for new drugs advances, reliance on efficient communication and collaboration strategies between partners is also evolving. However, to ensure patient safety, meeting compliance mandates can take priority over integrating new technologies. Coupled with the explosion of data resulting from the drug discovery and development process, companies have had to look to other industries to implement enterprise software systems that allow researchers in laboratories around the world to collaborate.

THE SOLUTION

There have been many technologies that have sworn to transform the drug discovery and development process, but many may fail to deliver on all the benefits promised. For example, highthroughput screening (HTS) promised to allow drug screening laboratories to “process” several tens or even hundreds of thousands of molecules per day. However, the results of contemporary HTS are often composed of false positives and false negatives, and relatively expensive. Another introduced technology that missed the mark is the Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS), which promised to take large sets of data and deliver paperless results. However, many customers found themselves unsatisfied with the difficulty of use and vast amount of training required. With these disappointments in mind, adapting to another new groundbreaking technology may seem difficult. But the reality is, cloud computing is already making it easier and less expensive for companies and clinicians to deliver new drugs and analyze data that used to take years and tens of millions of dollars to complete.

The beauty of cloud computing is it enables virtually unlimited computing resources on tap – allowing pharmaceutical researchers to scale their computing environment up or down, when they need it. With cloud computing, it’s easier for companies to adapt solutions to their specific needs. For instance, BT’s Cloud Compute life sciences platform can deliver specific pharmaceutical applications across the value chain all the way from discovery to commercial operations, ensuring that necessary applications can work across pipelines rather than force-fitting one application to all pipeline teams.

Beyond cost savings, there are multiple business advantages of cloud computing for the pharmaceutical industry. Cloud computing has existed for years, but it has recently experienced a boom in attention among business sectors looking to analyze and manage massive amounts of data. The main impact of cloud computing to pharmaceutical companies is that it creates a reduced dependence on internal infrastructures and streamlines operations across the globe. In some cases, the preference is to do some initial data reduction locally, due to compliance issues and data protection policies. However, a few of the primary advantages of cloud computing deliver several advantages, including the following:

Scalability: As a business grows, so does the availability and capability of what can be stored and manipulated in the cloud. This is especially important given the peaks and troughs in pharmaceutical research. For example, let’s say a company finishes a clinical trial in which its dataset is stored on machines that are 100% occupied, and the company needs to add two more clinical trials. With cloud computing, the company could easily access more storage and computer power, and complete the analysis of this information. It could also do more specific queries and look at cross clinical trials or look at how two competitive drugs perform in the clinical trials. In the past, the simple fact is most companies just didn’t have that access to such a significant computational estate because it was too costly, and they would have had to provision it for peak usage. By leveraging cloud computing, companies now have access to much more elastic and scalable data storage options.

Flexibility: Instead of relying on one application, companies can easily build their pipeline and test different applications under different environments, simultaneously, with no concerns about data storage or demands. By freeing scientists from the boundaries presented by data processing constraints, today’s laboratories can work faster and smarter. No longer do they need to spend precious time worrying about IT configurations and available server space. As a result, scientists can make earlier predictions about potential drug candidates, while also identifying earlier what drugs should be eliminated from the discovery process. Further, cloud computing allows scientists to trace what information has been used in data analysis and can be used to tackle highly parallel computational problems. Even on the commercial side, companies can use the cloud platform to evaluate trends in the industry, such as the impact of discontinuing a drug.

Global Connections: Because the cloud can be accessed anywhere and at any time, this also enables companies to share information more quickly, easily, and efficiently. Pharmaceutical companies can scale project teams up and down – based on the number of trials they are running – regardless of the location of various team members. The global infrastructure of the cloud platform delivers connectivity, visibility, agility, and collaboration necessary for performing in a global marketplace. For example, if a lead pharmaceutical researcher is in France working on a project, at close of business, he can easily hand off his work to a scientist in the U.S., who can then pick up and access the project exactly where he left off. In turn, a colleague in China can come in later and access the results, using the same resources as colleagues in the U.S. or France. The cloud helps to essentially eliminate down time and allows companies to easily continue priority work, 24 hours a day.

Ease of Use: As we’re all aware, the pharmaceutical industry can be quite unique in terms of how it operates, how it submits information to regulatory agencies, and how it complies. Using the cloud platform makes it easy for pharmaceutical companies to work collaboratively both internally and externally, providing for better integration of all the moving pieces of data associated with the life cycle of a drug.

Regulatory Compliance Adherence: A cloud platform can offer a simpler way to comply with various regulation requirements. This is because cloud-based systems are often more secure and more compliant than an on premises system, as they are designed and maintained – and continually updated – to address the latest security risks and regulations. BT even offers a GxP-compliant variant of its cloud platform.

SUMMARY

While the benefits of cloud are clear, stepping into the cloud can seem a bit overwhelming at first. When choosing the best cloud platform for your business, you should first research the type of environment you need, which applications are right for the cloud, the benefits of each platform, and how to prioritize the environment. Then, identify which applications are driving the business and which need separate, stand-alone environments, as you won’t want to reengineer an entire application for a cloud strategy. At BT, a team of advisors works closely with pharmaceutical companies to help prioritize applications and determine which applications can provide the greatest return on investment and which applications are easy or difficult to transition into the cloud. Cloud computing enables pharmaceutical companies to share information in real-time, run the same program across several connected computers simultaneously, analyze results more quickly, and communicate across the globe with colleagues seamlessly. It truly allows pharmaceutical companies to maximize productivity, collaboration, and resources. This is an exciting time for the pharmaceutical industry to discover the promises that cloud technology holds.

Can cloud computing relieve the growing pressures that are building in the pharmaceutical industry? It offers elasticity and scalability for storing and processing large amounts of data, which all growing labs can find use in. It’s a flexible platform that allows for simultaneous testing across applications. It enables employees to collaborate strategically, without disruption, in a global marketplace. It’s cost effective and easy enough to use that it helps to reduce the dependency on internal infrastructures alone. In the drug discovery game, the cloud does more than just relieve the pressures to develop drugs faster and cheaper, remain compliant, and maximize global expertise – it spurs innovation and promotes efficiency.

To view this issue and all back issues online, please visit www.drug-dev.com.

Peter Shaw is the Head of Partner Development with BT Global Services since 1993. Mr. Shaw began his career at the UK Atomic Energy Authority and has worked to deliver a computational modelling system for engineers at British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. He was also responsible for a data center providing specialist services at Dowell Schlumberger in France. He currently focuses on creating the partner program for BT for Life Sciences, and he has extensive experience in working with partner organizations.

Yury Rozenman is the Business Development Director for Pharmaceutical with BT Global Services since 2005, where he is responsible for marketing and sales strategy of BT’s solutions portfolio and proposition development. The main four areas Mr. Rozenman focuses on are Clinical Development, Regulatory Compliance and Risk Management, Supply Chain, and Sales & Marketing. Previously, Mr. Rozenman held positions as Director of Information-Based Medicine Strategy at IBM Life Sciences and Director of Life Sciences Division at Platform Computing.