How to Leverage Big Data in Pharmaceutical R&D?

Promoting safety in drug discovery and development helps organizations achieve a competitive advantage over others, especially during regulatory submissions.

Pharma Tech Outlook | Wednesday, July 29, 2020

The utilization of big data enables pharma companies to enhance the efficiency of clinical trials and avoid regulatory backlash.

FREMONT, CA – Research and development form the core of the pharmaceutical industry. A rising number of companies are leveraging big data to enhance the efficiency and success of clinical trials. Although clinicians have enjoyed access to extensive databases of molecular, research, and trial data, the tightly controlled clinical trial ecosystems and lack of robust technologies hindered the practical use of data.

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The recent developments in technology and the revolutions in the pharma sector has spurred a wide adoption of big data and analytics, leading to optimized workflows, better learning, enhanced treatments, improved compliance, and better patient outcomes. With the inception of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), developers are seeking to develop robust algorithms to help clinicians in predicting the effect of medicines on different genetic orders.

Data Discovery

The incorporation of advanced modeling techniques, including systems biology, high-throughput data-production, next-generation sequencing, and son will enable pharma organizations to generate vast amounts of data in a short period. Quality data will not only enhance analytics and innovation but will also fuel drug development.

The analytical capabilities of the organization play a crucial role in the consolidation of data. It will facilitate the seamless connection between patient genotypes and clinical trial results, leading to enhanced identification of responsive patients. It will not only increase the contribution of the pharma sector toward personalized medicine but will also spur the development of cutting-edge discovery technologies and analytical techniques.

The deployment of biosensors, smartphone apps, and wearables has led to the generation of large quantities of real-time data. Also, the presence of remote monitoring technologies enables researchers to gather patient data and draw relevant insights to aid in drug development, drug analysis, and drug marketing.

Integration of Data

Even with the adoption of big data technologies, many organizations are facing challenges when it comes to the integration of reliable and consistent data. To achieve the full potential of big data, it is imperative to gather data from multiple stages of the pharmaceutical value chain, including drug discovery, development, treatment, and patient outcome. Consistent and productive data serves as the foundation for valuable analytics.

It is often challenging for pharma industries to reinvent their data integration systems. To facilitate a seamless migration, they can differentiate the specific data types and deal with the relevant datasets to obtain the needed insights depending on the clinical requirements.

Utilizing intelligent algorithms to link laboratory and clinical data has led to the generation of robust insights, enabling clinicians to identify relevant applications or compounds, while maintaining safety and efficacy. Organizations can gather data from trusted sources, ensuring quality assurance, workflow management, and role-based access to the data.

Efficiency of Trials

Organizations can enhance the clinical trial design and improve the outcomes by consolidating robust smart devices and facilitating seamless data exchange. Employing dynamic sample-size estimation will accommodate effective reaction to drug-safety signals, enabling rapid responses to emerging insights from the clinical data. By promoting smaller trials and shortening trial times can introduce significant efficiency gains.

The analytical insights enable pharma organizations to identify lagging sites and bring new sites online. The electronic data capture systems allow clinicians to record patient information, thus streamlining the trials and eliminating the errors involved in manual data entry. Seamless data access and exchange facilitates not only real-time monitoring but also enhanced management and response to the critical issues.

Safety of Drugs

Promoting safety in drug discovery and development helps organizations achieve a competitive advantage over others, especially during regulatory submissions. It leads to faster approvals, allowing organizations to get their product into the market faster. The technological developments and the availability of data have led to the inception of robust and sophisticated safety approaches designed to identify the safety signals and take prompt action.

The availability of data from physician communities, consumer-generated information, and electronic medical records has enabled clinicians to seamlessly deal with the safety issues, using various analytical methods to identify adverse events from the data with greater accuracy and speed. Also, a prompt response will avert regulatory and public backlashes, saving millions of dollars for pharmaceutical organizations.

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Promoting safety in drug discovery and development helps organizations achieve a competitive advantage over others, especially during regulatory submissions.

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