How leveraging intelligent data architecture fast tracks new drug launches

Clinical trials in medical and pharmaceutical research must deal with extreme amounts of diverse data which are generated across several institutions. A flexible data architecture can help shorten time to market.

- Celine Siow

‘Lightspeed’ was the name of a project with which a COVID-19 vaccine was brought to market at record speed. However, exceptional projects of this kind should not hide the fact that the typical development of new drugs generally only progresses at a snail’s pace. It takes an average of 13 years from the idea to the first approval. One of the challenges here is the huge amount and variety of decentralised data that must be analysed in clinical drug studies – all strictly regulated by laws and industry standards. However, with better analytical technology, companies, governments and public health bodies could actually leverage this data deluge to better analyse and accelerate drug development. The accelerated development of COVID-19 vaccines has shown us what is possible when enough people and resources are dedicated to finding a solution. Continuing to develop improved ways of harnessing data to draw insights, and better, leveraging technology will be critical to accelerating the outcomes that medical experts are urgently seeking for COVID-19 and other illnesses.

The challenge of data analysis