The COVID-19 pandemic caused a significant change in the pharmaceutical industry. The collaboration between pharmaceutical firms in the development of COVID vaccines has been a decisive factor in their rapid availability of vaccines worldwide. For example, Pfizer and BioNTech, as well as Moderna and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States, joined forces to develop their vaccines. The same applies to AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, as well as Johnson & Johnson and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. In clinical trials, the collaboration went even beyond this: Pfizer and BioNTech, as well as Moderna and the NIH, for example, shared their study results and cooperated to quickly improve the efficacy and tolerability of their vaccines.

Taking BioNTech and Pfizer as an example, each brought strengths to the joint solution: BioNTech its leading research in mRNA technology and Pfizer its global production and distribution. Among other things, this had the effect of skyrocketing BioNTech's profit to €10.3 billion in 2021, up from €15.2 million in the previous year. Pfizer’s stock price rose by about 50% in the 6 months after FDA approval.

Across all diseases and not just during a pandemic, one thing is clear: Patients will benefit if the research, regulatory approval, and scaled-up production can maintain the increased speed. But speed through co-operation requires agreeing on rules of that co-operation, and the sharing of data to enable efficient co-operation. As a result, data of all kinds, data management and data standards are gaining new significance within the industry. As any company involved in tightly networked industries like the automotive industry and the oil and gas industry, they are key to any form of cross-company collaboration.

Interoperability lets you trust the data format, but you need more than that

This near-disruptive change has likely only taken place under the pressure of a global pandemic, and it will only prevail in the “new normal” if the partners can confidently assess how they mutually benefit from opening up to each other – and where exactly the boundaries lie. It will be a question of determining what data is exchanged, for what purpose and by whom it may be used. Because one thing is still true: only if a company can be confident that its intellectual property is protected and that it retains control over the exploitation of the often hundreds of millions invested in R&D will it be open to collaboration.

Pharma and Life Sciences have always been highly data-driven industries. Research and development (R&D), clinical trials, approval procedures with government agencies – these are all processes that generate data and need data to function. There is already solid progress on the interoperability of data formats between medical devices and doctor’s records, such as the HL7 and FHIR data standard. And the use of the Clinical Trials Information System becomes mandatory for new clinical trial applications in the EU, which harmonizes much of the application information needed for interventional clinical trials with human medicinal products.

But there is still much work to be done with defining how data can (and cannot) be used by partners. How can technology be used to help enforce paper contracts which are usually only seen by top managers and the legal department. Which infrastructure can be used jointly by the partners to confirm that only authorized people access the data allowed? And that the information, especially patient data, is secure and adheres to the General Data Protection Regulation?

The technical solutions are in place

An example of how this can work in principle is provided by Health X dataLOFT. Similar to large-scale ecosystems covered by Catena-X in the automotive sector, this cloud platform is designed using the Gaia-X architecture to support features from authorization and access to data connectors enforcing which data can be exchanged and for what purpose. Health X goes one step further because it is not only an ability between businesses (for example hospitals and pharma companies) but gives patients more power over how their data may be used. Use cases include collecting health data from hospitals and doctors' offices based on information provided by patients themselves, such as vitality data from smartwatches. This data can in turn be integrated into R&D and clinical trials and, going the other way, enriched with information from pharma and Life Sciences. If it then also becomes common practice for manufacturers and researchers to share data (and, where applicable, profits) with each other according to defined rules, an innovation cycle is created that enables faster progress at lower cost.

At the same time, the complex authorization systems that play, for example, a role in the deployment of Microsoft solutions in the corporate environment, provide as a a blueprint. With the right know-how, access rights can be assigned (and quickly revoked) in a highly granular way, and it is possible to track who has accessed which information and when at any time. These and other insights from modern IT security help pharmaceutical companies expand the scope for cooperation without introducing new risks.

Exchange beyond the horizon

To explore the options for collaboration and to bring experiences from other areas into your own industry, one thing above all is important: dialog. Dialog within the pharmaceutical and Life Sciences community – and dialog that goes beyond what is right in front of you, – dialog that includes representatives from companies in other industries, but also with consultants, experienced transformation experts who can help with the necessary knowledge transfer. That’s why Avanade has launched a new series of events dealing with digitalization – starting with our Avanade Breakfast Event for Life Sciences. Come and join us for our first session on April 19 in Zurich.

Simply register here.

And if you don't want to wait that long and have questions right away, feel free to contact us. We look forward to working with you to identify and leverage the potential that is still hidden in your production today.