nihar routray blp022 essay happiest minds

8/3/2019 Nihar Routray BLP022 Essay Happiest Minds

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Nihar Routray

BLP022

Solving the problem of disjointed

information and high R&D costs


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The ChallengeNeed for a practical solution to tackle the twin problems of disjointed information and

extremely high R&D costs for a multi-national and multi-brand company.

R & D in a pharmaceutical company is a very complex process requiring considerableamount of time and a diverse set of stand-alone systems and specialized computer

applications. The requirement of resources for these applications has become so high

now that the company cannot afford the considerable costs of building, implementing

and supporting these infrastructures.

Pharmaceutical companiesgenerally face the problem of

having complex silos of

information built around their

brands. Along with that largeamount of information is being

created everyday by numerous

systems and applications in all

kinds of formats which pose a

serious challenge to manage,

monitor and retrieve required

information at times of need.

Being a large multi-national,though the company employs advanced communication systems but still a significant

disconnect is observed between the various enterprise teams as they are dispersed

across different global locations.

Pharma companies also need to maintain their legacy systems containing critical data asthe FDA requires data related to a drug to be maintained for a minimum period of 2

years after it was last sold. Due to this the legacy systems cannot be completely done

away with and integrating them will run into huge costs.

Assumption:

Have considered a pharmaceutical company which is spread across different geographies across

the world and has multiple brands in its drug portfolio


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Current SituationCurrently, the company is just throwing in more resources, people, computational and storage

capabilities at the problem. However, this approach cannot be continued with and is

economically unviable in todays world of cut-throat competition and economic climate.

Now let us understand the R&D process and how IT has been supporting it.

DISCOVERYPre DiscoveryAim: Understand the disease and choose target moleculeProcess: Scientists from government, industry and academic institutes create

knowledge base using various computational tools and insights

DEVELOPMENT

DiscoveryAim: Find Lead compoundProcess:High Throughput screening via robotics and computational power, De

Novo creation, Genetic engineeringPre-ClinicalAim: Determine drug is safe for testing in human beingsProcess:Extensive in vitro and in vivo tests and recording of test data

3-6Y

ears

6

-7Y

ears

INDAim: Obtain approval from FDA for clinical trials in human beingsProcess: Review by FDA and IRB

Clinical TrialsAim: Trials in human being to check drug efficacy, dosage and safetyProcess: Drug tested on human beings in 3 phases moving from smaller to

larger patient groups. Trial data recorded on paper or through LIMS

1-2Y

ears

ReviewAim: Reviewby FDA for drug approval and manufacturingProcess: FDA reviews the NDA which can be more than 100000 pages

ManufacturingAim: Large scale manufacturing of drugProcess: Scaling up facility and large scale production following GMP

Ongoing Stu iesAim: Monitor drug in marketProcess: Monitorthe drug in market and report adverse events to FDA

EstimatesCost: Upto 1 BillionDuration: 10-15 years


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All the steps mentioned above include a huge number of activities and consume a lot of time to

get completed. A variety of dedicated systems are employed at each stage to support processes

and record and manage the data being generated.

As we saw in the process flow, a new drug development costs around $1 billion and takes a

minimum of 10 years to complete. Also, a large number of potential drug research projects are

shelved at some point during the drug development process owing to adverse effects or limitedefficacy. According to Industry records, only 1 out of 1,000 potential compounds get approved

finally and are sold in the market.

The company is currently getting inundated with complicated and resource intensive

applications which are churning out huge amount of data. So, the company is hard pressed to

do more with less while increasing flexibility and responsiveness to meet the business needs.

The IT budgets of Pharma companies are nearly consuming 15% of the total R&D expenditures

and about 8% of the total headcount of the organization. This high level of resource

consumption while maybe essential but does move the organization away from its core mission

of drug discovery and development.

So it becomes highly imperative for the company to find ways to reduce R&D costs while at the

same time increasing productivity through better data management and retrieval.

Approach HighlightsHappiest Minds proposes a two pronged approach of embedding analytics into its daily

operations while leveraging the cloud to counter the problems of disjointed information and

high R&D costs. This approach would be carefully implemented along with an information

agenda as it would provide a high level roadmap aligning the business needs with the analytic

insight and the cloud platform to the underlying technology and processes.

The company will be provided with an access to a low-cost shared cloud computing

environment with an array of hardware, software and technical resources which would help

reduce the various costs. Our cloud platforms will help you integrate your entire business

services and include high levels of shared data management and advanced features to help you

adopt new business models which would clearly differentiate your organization from the rest in


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the industry.These cloud platforms are also encompassed in a layer of security frameworkwhich would take care of all the perceived risks. There would be further reduction in costs as all

the heavy functions such as computing power and storage will be leveraged in the cloud.

Proportion of Life Sciences R&D Informatics budget devoted to Cloud computing in 3 years:

Source: Insight Pharma Reports

The augmented analytics capabilities provide end users access to near real-time information

facilitating collaboration and preserving transparency. The differentiated analytics advantage

provided by Happiest Minds will help the company achieve value creation quite early in an

organizations progression to sophistication by leveraging structured and unstructured data

from within and outside the organization.

Source: Analytics: The New Path to Value, a joint MIT Sloan Management Review and IBM Institute for Business Value study.

Copyright Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2010.


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Why Happiest MindsCompanies are seizing this opportunity provided by Happiest Minds to use advanced

information analytics and cloud computing for business advantage in their respective industry

sectors. These business leaders are not depending anymore only on intuition but are combining

the new analytics techniques with the expertise from Happiest Minds to make decisions in a

completely different way.

Creating disruptions through technology as well as through the next generation skilled worker

nihar routray blp022 essay happiest minds

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