Applications of cloud computing in the pharmaceutical industry

Concept:

Dutch clinical trial software start-up Castor has developed a scalable decentralised and hybrid clinical trial platform. The cloud-based platform helps to accelerate clinical trials and make it patient-focused. The platform allows researchers to streamline clinical trials and capture and integrate data from any source in real-time.

Nature of disruption:

Patients can use Resilience's web and mobile apps to obtain content and information about their cancer, as well as to better understand and treat side effects. The software allows users to track a variety of data points as well as access material and information regarding their condition.

It's also a software-as-a-service solution for hospitals, allowing them to customise therapies and enhance therapeutic decisions. It uses ML and natural language processing to analyse scientific material, identify relevant similarities with previous cases, and surface clinical trials depending on numerous criteria.

Resilience's software solution also provides caregivers with informed recommendations utilising ML to simplify and personalise therapeutic decision-making. Moreover, the app can improve the quality of life of the patients.

Outlook:

Cancer treatment is a lengthy and difficult process, and people are looking for ways to make it easier. For both the medical team and the patients, Resilience offers a full software solution for cancer therapy. Using synergistic and complementary tools, it intends to provide caregivers a complete solution to better support patients.

The start-up was founded in collaboration with Gustave Roussy, a cancer research organisation. Resilience has acquired Betterise, a French start-up, to improve data-driven cancer care. In January 2022, the healthcare start-up raised $45m in a Series A funding round led by Cathay Innovation.

Concept:

Dutch clinical trial software start-up Castor has developed a scalable decentralised and hybrid clinical trial platform. The cloud-based platform helps to accelerate clinical trials and make it patient-focused. The platform allows researchers to streamline clinical trials and capture and integrate data from any source in real-time.

Nature of disruption:

The platform provides real-time trial visibility into clinical trials by monitoring and managing research participants throughout the clinical trial lifecycle. The dashboards enable us to identify issues and take appropriate actions. It allows researchers to conduct studies and incorporate real-time data from in-person and remote patients from any source.  

Patients who want to participate in clinical trials can use a smartphone app to enrol and contribute their data. Castor’s ePRO solution can integrate with multiple devices, wearables, and apps make it easy to collect and continuously update research data for decentralised and hybrid trials. Its API enables the data collection from IoT-enabled devices and other systems. The platform is compliant with regulations including 21 CFR Part 11, Good Clinical Practice (GCP), and Annex 11.  

Additionally, The World Health Organization (WHO) employed Castor in its Solidarity Trial which investigated how current drugs could enhance results when compared to standard of care alone. Over 10,000 patients were enrolled in the trial, which took place in 553 locations across 30 countries.

Outlook:

Clinical trials take a long time to set up and patients are also required to travel to a research facility that may be several hours from their home. As a result, approximately 40% of trials are terminated due to slow enrolment, and an inconvenient process prevents researchers from enrolling a varied set of patients. Castor enables patients to enrol and share their data via a mobile app, reducing cost and time for the clinical trial.  

The start-up raised $45m in series B funding led by F-Prime Capital, Eight Roads Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, and Inkef Capital. Castor intends to use the proceeds for product development and collecting real-world evidence from decentralised trials. It also has plans to expand to Asia.  

Nature of disruption:

Orbita offers Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) -compliant chatbots and voice assistants for various healthcare applications. OrbitaENGAGE is a virtual assistant for digital front door applications that provides care throughout the patient journey.

OrbitaASSIST is a voice-enabled virtual assistant that offers remote and in-facility patient support. Similarly, OrbitaCONNECT is a personalised virtual assistant that promotes pre-and post-visit outreach by helping patients manage their health and treatments in-facility or at home. The virtual assistant increases efficiency and reduces cost, allowing a user to enable real change across the organisation per Orbita.

Outlook:

The Covid-19 pandemic has increased the adoption of telehealth services such as AI-enabled voice services, virtual assistants and chatbots. Telehealth services provide continuous access to healthcare, thereby improving clinical efficiency and enhancing patient engagement. It guides patients and helps to deal with the situation remotely while communicating with physicians through virtual channels.  

Philips intends to utilise Orbita’s conversational virtual assistance platform to develop an integrated telehealth solution that allows healthcare providers to deliver on the quadruple aim of better health outcomes, increased efficiency throughout the health continuum, better patient and staff experiences, and lower cost of care.  

Concept:

California-based digital health tech provider BrightInsight and AstraZeneca have co-developed a disease management platform AMAZE. It is built on the cloud-based platform BrightInsight. The platform intends to offer patients an end-to-end digital solution for chronic diseases like asthma, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and heart failure.

Nature of disruption:

AMAZE is a mobile application incorporated with digital IoT-driven devices and a clinician health dashboard which in turn is synchronised with the electronic health record (EHR). Its cloud database captures real-time patient data, augments it, and forwards it to physicians for effective diagnosis and care adjustments.  

Healthcare providers can outline a set of rules based on patients' health conditions that will flag any deterioration in patient’s health post-treatment. The app also allows clinicians and patients to communicate with each other via secure texting or teleconsulting.  

The pre-built functionality of the BrightInsight platform and the abundance of information related to EHR with leading hospitals and healthcare centres provide the required ability to enhance digital technology. The platform is compliant with all regulatory, privacy, and security-related guidelines, as per the healthcare requirements.  

Outlook:

According to National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), chronic diseases are responsible for seven out of ten deaths in the US. Although there are various remote-monitoring options, only a few provide a unified patient experience across many conditions and are integrated into the clinical workflow, both of which are essential drivers of acceptance and scale. This leads to an increased rate of chronic disease.  

AstraZeneca Amaze aims to the gap between patients and health-service providers. It intends to provide a service that is consolidated with all the required aspects of an efficient clinical workflow including IoT-based remote monitoring. AstraZeneca claims that AMAZE will enhance patient engagement and adherence to therapy for such major ailments and in addition, enable the doctor to provide a real-time diagnosis based one-to-one consultation. It has planned to expand the reach of therapy areas in near future.