During the past 10 years, sponsors and contract research organizations (CROs) have invested heavily in new technologies. Clinical trials rely on an enormous number of development systems, including electronic data capture (EDC) systems, clinical trial management systems (CTMS), ePro, laboratory, financial, safety — and the list goes on. Life science companies are now faced with the challenge of accessing and analyzing the rapidly growing volume of data that their clinical development systems are accumulating in order to draw insights that will speed trials, reduce risk and lower costs. 

As a result, life science companies are spending billions of dollars on in-house staff, external consultants, professional services, and data warehouses, which are extremely expensive and are never fully operational. They then layer on business intelligence (BI) tools like Cognos, OBIEE, Business Objects, and visualization-based data discovery tools like Spotfire. Unfortunately, this approach often falls short of providing the most valuable, realtime answers relevant to specific inquiries. This strategy also comes with enormous hidden costs due to the extensive resources required to setup and maintain complex data warehouses — in addition to the need for external consultants and in-house developers to build and maintain the data warehouses and reports. It’s no surprise that life science companies haven’t been able to fully extract the value promised of gaining true insights based on investments in existing clinical development systems.

Cloud computing is driving major changes how life science companies are analyzing and utilizing data insights. Next-generation, cloud-based solutions provide realtime dashboards and collaboration across different data collection systems. They have the ability to perform ad hoc reporting and analysis across clinical development systems by connecting directly to the underlying source systems, bypassing the need for data warehouses and eliminating large in-house IT capital investments and associated internal resources. A cloud-based solution provides life science companies with end-to-end awareness and the ability to collaborate and synchronize workflows across all clinical development systems throughout the organization. Data is available in real time for analysis, regardless of where the source clinical development system resides, enabling teams to gain actionable insights across multiple sites and studies.

Sponsors are increasingly more comfortable hosting data off-site in the cloud and via third parties to significantly reduce costs and improve the way clinical development teams access, understand, explore and analyze clinical data. This enables data managers, monitors, medical reviewers and clinical operations executives to identify broad operational and clinical trends across trials and easily drill down and report on a wide range of factors, including safety issues, regulatory requirements and opportunities for critical time and cost savings. Also, cloud-hosted solutions are also usually more secure than in-house deployments, because security is part of the cloud vendors’ core business.

C-levels of sponsor organizations and CROs need a bird’s eye view of clinical, operational, project and portfolio data to determine the long-range pipeline of development projects, associated resourcing and licensing options. Without the cloud, deploying comprehensive data analytics and visualization tools is a costly and complicated process. Visibility into data across the entire drug development portfolio is limited at best.

Cloud-based clinical insight tools enable sponsors and CROs to equip teams with data at their fingertips to lower ongoing costs by taking advantage of economies of scale. Cloud-based tools require no capital expense by eliminating the need to provision hardware and the need for internal staff to set up and maintain the computing infrastructure. Sponsors and CROs can leverage cloud-based tools for quick deployments in the matter of days or weeks rather than months or years.

The time and money saved on maintaining and securing expensive technology infrastructures and the benefits gained from leveraging cloud analytics and collaboration across clinical development systems can drive more effective clinical trials and fund core research to create promising clinical candidates for the future. As more and more sponsors embrace cloud-based technology and best practices, the future of clinical trials is poised for greater efficiencies and success in delivering better drugs to the market, faster. 

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Rick Morrison
Comprehend Systems

Rick Morrison is chief executive officer and co-founder of Comprehend Systems. He can be reached at rmorrison@comprehend.com.