Developments in signal-detection technologies are currently driving the use of adaptive trials while supply chain forecasting solutions are now driving trial efficiency. But cloud computing is just beginning to have an impact in drug R&D.
That's according to R. Arun Kumar, VP and head of global life sciences at IT consultancy Infosys. He tells Pharmaceutical Technology Europe that despite experimentation so far, the need remains for more integrated data sharing across research, development, manufacturing and sales functions to improve trials and use feedback.
Biopharma's exploratory use of public and private clouds for data storage, hosting and access needs is an increasing trend, he says. Complex genetic sequences and biomarker data, hosted in the cloud by open source bodies, are being accessed by a broad audience of researchers at universities and companies.
The upside for drugmakers as cloud use increases is reduced dependence on their own IT infrastructure. The change will drive a move away from capital-expense-intensive tech deployments to an operations-expense, pay-as-you-go business model. And among its major benefits will be the standardization and streamlining of operations, better data integration and stronger collaborations with partners.
- here's the interview