Convergence of health and pharma
As the biggest industry sector in most European economies, healthcare is already given a big chunk of the gross domestic product (GDP). This portion is expected to become even bigger and have a huge impact on employment, the opportunities to grow businesses and economies in general.
Traditionally, the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries have followed a conventional supplierconsumer relationship. However, both industries face the same core challenge: how to deliver better health outcomes at lower cost.
At the drug discovery level
Working together on pre-license activities – the sensible way forward
Pharmaceutical organisations want to understand the causes of diseases and to develop compounds that can be tested in the lab for their effectiveness in treating a disease. Once these targets are identified by the research and development team, they are usually passed to a team responsible for turning these targets into medicines that can be submitted for clinical trials. Once the complex clinical trials process is completed, the medicines can be submitted for regulatory approval, and if granted, sold to healthcare providers. End to end, this process of discovering and developing a new molecular entity (NME) takes in average 13.5 years, and (capitalized) costs of $1.8 billion2. The number of targets that hit the market as medicines is a small percentage that is fast diminishing.
During target identification, scientists work to understand the cause of disease by looking at pathways, for example, of how the disease begins and spreads. They investigate gene expression3, protein mechanisms and many other highly complex aspects of the causes of disease. Advances in genomics4, proteonomics5 and protein modelling are transforming the discovery process. At the same time, the sheer volume and structure of the data is challenging the leaders in the field to develop shared ontologies6 to express the meaning of the data.
It is in this area of intensive scientific research that collaboration and transformative partnerships between the pharmaceutical companies themselves can take place. A common ontology allows a shared understanding of the semantics of the original data. The cloud offers to host large volumes of complex data in collaborative platform and at relatively low cost. This is an area where Logica and our partner ecosystem have a definite, key role to play.
At the end of the discovery process, the object is to turn target compounds into medicines. This is a costly part of the process, and the later a target falls out of the process, the greater the loss incurred by the company. It is therefore vital that those medicines entering the later-stage clinical trials, with live patients, are targeted at a narrow, highly specific cohort7.
Post-marketing surveillance and translational research
All drugs have to be monitored even after they are licensed. Now it is slow, uncertain and expensive. In addition, while it may not be traditionally included in pharma R&D phases, it is evident that phase V of translational analysis and evaluation is increasing in importance for both society and the pharma industry.
Access to adverse reaction reporting in primary and secondary care can be made automatic, continuous and accurate. These streams of rich information also provide an opportunity to analyse the effectiveness that compounds currently in the market may have for other diseases. With data already in electronic form we can easily do it. Obviously those results won’t be enough for officials to justify a claim for new indication, but it can tell us, where to look, and how. Many older drugs may have uses we are not at all aware of. An extension in indication of an “old” drug would be an optimal scenario for patients, healthcare and pharma since that way it would get a new ‘life’ without the need to undertake costly studies for safety.
Logica can help you. From early stage development, to data capture, submission to regulatory bodies and even late stage development. In the process you’ll not only reduce costs but will stay on top of compliance demands.
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