The Life Sciences industry is undergoing a rapid transition that is placing traditional business models under pressure. Success depends on these organizations’ ability to continuously innovate and deliver new drugs or therapies faster and safer, while also aggressively commercializing them.
However, Life Sciences organizations are no longer just in the business to discover, develop, manufacture, and commercialize innovative medical entities. They have also become information powerhouses. That’s because no product can come to market if it is not approved by regulatory authorities. But for that to happen, a significant amount of data from siloed sources and functions must be submitted for review by authorities—without it, there are no products. In addition, the industry must continue to operate in a highly scrutinized environment, ensuring that they adhere to regulatory and quality compliance.
Therefore, Life Sciences organizations are responsible for the management and stewardship of massive data sets. In fact, the Life Sciences and Healthcare ecosystem generates roughly 30% of the world’s data volume today. Adding to this complexity is the pandemic, which has forever changed the way information is generated, captured and managed. The rapid data growth in the industry means that it’s more important—and more complex—than ever for Life Sciences companies to harmonize and integrate systems and applications to unlock their information’s full potential.
Not a pipeline challenge but a lack of intelligent information management
Life Sciences organizations face several challenges when extracting insight from content. First, they deal with vast amounts of unstructured data—somewhere between 80-90% of the data held by Life Sciences organizations is unstructured. Second, Life Sciences organizations are hesitant to share content, due to intellectual property risks, and that hesitancy leads to siloed data which in turn hinders gaining insights from information.
Companies also lack clarity and transparency in their data, which leads to a poor return in value to their business. And with relevant information stored in disparate systems throughout the organization, it is difficult or impossible for employees to find the information they need—let alone analyze the information for insight to improve decision-making.
The industry also faces challenges when trying to automate and optimize processes, including error-prone, high human-touch ones. For example, many companies I speak with are still using regulatory binders to store trial data, which can lead to misfiled or missing documents and issues with tracking and reporting paper documents and manual document exchange. In fact, Clinical Researcher reported that 57% of trial documents were misfiled or missing thanks to the widespread use of high human-touch methodologies to classify and verify documents.
It is no wonder that when top Pharma and Healthcare CEOs were asked what keeps them up at night, many responded, “We have mountains of data, but only molehills of intelligence.”
I would argue that this industry isn’t challenged by bringing new therapies to market, but by their information management systems.
An agile and intelligent lifecycle information management platform
The industry has responded to these increasing information challenges with a major digital transformation effort. But many of the information management practices and platforms in Life Sciences are still caught up in yesterday’s business models and information systems.
Information is the fuel that drives the modern Life Sciences organization. To release the value of their information, they need an agile and intelligent lifecycle information management platform that delivers the full value of digital transformation across the entire value chain.
Such a platform places information at the heart of operations, processes and systems. It brings information together seamlessly, integrates it and secures it across the development lifecycle—regardless of how it was created, what format it’s in, or where it’s stored. It can also break down information siloes between departments or partner organizations.
With an agile and intelligent lifecycle information management strategy, Life Sciences companies can gain the insights they need to go from pipeline to patient.
Why OpenText for Life Sciences?
At OpenText, we have an extensive portfolio of technology solutions and capabilities that allow our customers to leverage their lead applications to intelligently capture information, centrally manage, integrate, and secure their content, optimize, and automate their processes, and connect and share information for internal and external collaboration. We help our customers master their operational efficiencies with an agile and intelligent lifecycle information management platform — your pipeline-to patient-platform.
To learn more about OpenText Life Sciences solutions, visit our website.
