Despite life sciences being a fundamentally data-driven sector, it lags behind on digital maturity, but there are signs of change stirring
John Bosworth, Commercial Lead for Healthcare, Medtech & Life Sciences, TEKenable
The life sciences are all about data. Whether it is information about an individual patient, epidemiological information about a population, clinical trial results, or the hunt for useful compounds, all of this amounts to data.
Despite this, report after report has found that the sector has been slow to embrace the digital transformation that would allow it to scale its use of data.
John Bosworth, commercial lead for healthcare, life sciences and medtech at TEKenable, said that working across the sector, he had nonetheless seen a real appetite for just such a transformation.
TEKenable, which has worked with companies in pharmaceuticals, medical device development and contract research, as well as with public and private healthcare providers, provides end-to-end data solutions for the sector as well as application development. The scale and scope of the sector means that no two projects are exactly alike, but Bosworth said that efficient use of data made sense given how much data the sector produced.
“It isn’t just about drug manufacturing or discovery, or even trials. There is a huge amount of data involved across all life sciences.”
However, the reason the sector lags is clear: life sciences are, understandably, heavily-regulated. Notable regulation includes the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the United States, both of which are complex and nuanced but demand that personally identifying information (PII) is protected.
“Businesses in the life sciences are slow, and they’re slow because of compliance: compliance with HIPAA in the US and, of course, GDPR. They are also inherently risk-averse, and with good reason,” he said.
Indeed, liability alone ensures that pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers take a long time to consider new technologies. However, technological developments do not go unnoticed, and nowhere is this more obvious than with what data and analytics can mean for the sector, from predictive maintenance to drug discovery and diagnostics.
“The life sciences are gradually realising the advantages of artificial intelligence, as long as they can comply with GXP, which is ‘good clinical practice’,” Bosworth said.
Indeed, while artificial intelligence (AI), and generative artificial intelligence in particular, has been getting a lot of attention in all sectors in the past 18 months, deep learning and machine learning technologies have long been seen as promising for making sense of the vast quantity of data produced in healthcare and life sciences.
The life sciences are gradually realising the advantages of artificial intelligence
Nevertheless, fears persist in relation to both security and compliance. This meant there was a role for the likes of TEKenable to educate clients on the issue, Bosworth said.
“We do the majority of our work in Microsoft’s Azure cloud, and it is extremely secure. Microsoft spends a significant amount of money on that. Also, when we’re developing software, we develop to the relevant ISO standards, such as ISO 27001 information security management.”
Things were beginning to change, though, Bosworth said, as the technology was demonstrating its value.
“It’s all about taking them on a journey and demonstrating that with the rigorous security in the cloud, there is much less of a risk than there used to be,” he said.
The above text was reproduced from the interview published in BusinessPost on September 6th, 2024.
