A New Technology Paradigm Accelerates Pharmaceutical Innovation

Let’s start with the punch line. What if you had immediate access to data regardless of where you are in the world? What if your geographically dispersed teams could access complex data sets and analyze and act on those data sets, sitting thousands of miles away, with the performance as if that data were local? What if this innovative capability had been proven for over a decade? How would that capability have impacted your business?

Pharmaceutical leaders are challenged with a highly regulated environment, complex value chain, dynamic security landscape all while enormous pressure to innovate persists. Teams are often global in nature and have exciting, but operationally complicating, access to enormous data sets that in turn need access to powerful compute and cloud enabled applications. This is why the use cases abound for this new capability of Data Access Accelerator (DAA), identified by the CenturyLink Innovation Lab.

I have outlined below the top 5 game changing use cases for Pharmaceutical organizations and who should take the ball and run.

1. CIO: Data Management & Reduction of Data Sprawl

In a recent study, 25% of IT storage decision makers anticipate on-premise data to grow over 50% annually and 23% of those leaders expect off-premises data to grow over 50% annually as well¹. This data growth leads to management, cost, and resource burdens. The solution is, not to move the data, keep minimal copies of data and allow teams to access those data sets without movement or duplication.

2. R&D Teams: Access Remote Data Sets & Collaborate More Seamlessly

Whether teams need access to clinical trial data, genome sequencing, PACS images, pathology reports or molecular analysis, data is often geographically dispersed due to numerous operational factors. Furthermore, data may be centralized but specialists, or partner agencies, may be remote. Whichever the reason, enabling teams to collaborate on data regardless of physical location, with performance as if data were local, allows your teams to be more productive and streamlines collaboration.

3. Compliance: Data Sovereignty & Localization

Personal Health Information is governed and confidential. Many countries have instituted rules requiring personal health information (PHI) to remain in the country of origin. Given the global nature of Pharmaceutical operations including research and development, clinical trials and distribution, having data remain in country whilst enabling dispersed teams access to it both resolves compliance considerations while empowering teams with real time access.

4. CFO: Reduce Costly Egress Fees

Pharmaceutical companies are some of the largest consumers of cloud solutions. What is likely a thorny byproduct of cloud offerings is the costly egress fees that can disrupt the most stringent of budget planning. Mitigate fees by keeping data in the cloud while analyzing it where your team sits. Conversely, keep data on prem and leverage compute elsewhere with the capabilities of DAA.

5. Quality Assurance: Analyze Data Globally

Quality assurance is a critical function within pharmaceuticals where patient health is paramount. With global manufacturing operations, numerous regulatory and governing bodies, and dispersed QA teams, being able to analyze production and QA data regardless of origination would both enable teams to be more efficient and limit data duplication.

The idea of DAA is to create an integrated environment where users and applications have unrestricted access to relevant data in real time for greater productivity. DAA provides the mechanism that enables applications to access remote storage without having to copy and pre-stage data next to the compute you intend to use. You can use compute anywhere against data everywhere the instant that it’s created. Countless use cases exist within Pharmaceuticals and I know it can be a catalyst for innovation across the global value chain.

Learn more about DAA in Pharmaceuticals.

1. Enterprise Strategy Group, ESG Master Survey Results: 2019 Data Storage Trends, November 2019

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