Research and Development

Closing the gap between the scientist and the patient

Vanco Vlastimil (��ֳ� S.A.) — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 08:58:56 +0000

Closing the gap between the scientist and the patient

Jessica Williamson, US Protein Sciences

Vanco Vlastimi… Wed 26/07/2023 - 10:58

In a world where scientific innovations are occurring at an unprecedented pace, it's more important than ever to bridge the gap between scientists and the patients they strive to help. At ��ֳ� we believe a wave of innovation is helping reshape the healthcare landscape, with curiosity driving scientists and patients to come together to aid drug discovery and development so we can push the boundaries of what we can accomplish

Patient Involvement in Research

Partnering with patients enables us to delve deeper into our understanding of a disease and how it can profoundly affect individuals. Patients are experts in their own experiences, and their insights can provide valuable information to scientists. Furthermore, they can inform us on what aspects of a treatment or clinical trial participation they find most challenging, which we can work on overcoming.

Patient Involvement in Healthcare Innovation

Innovative digital technology is undoubtedly playing a crucial role in bridging the gap between the scientist and the patient. These technologies can enable individuals to actively participate in their healthcare by monitoring their daily health indicators, managing their medications, and tracking their physical activities. Additionally, by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) we have the potential to shift to a more precise approach to drug design and discovery which can also lead to more personalised medicines.

Driving Innovation Forward

As the driving force behind new discoveries in healthcare, scientists hold the key to unlocking innovations that have the potential to change lives. By fostering collaboration with patients, advocating for open access to knowledge, embracing digital health technologies, and learning more about the drivers of disease, we can close the gap between scientists and patients, creating a sustainable path to a healthier world for future generations.

Find out more about how innovation drives us forward here: Innovation is | ��ֳ�

innovation

435 Likes

Collaboration, Value, and Risk: Vital ingredients for healthcare innovation

Vanco Vlastimil (��ֳ� S.A.) — Wed, 31 May 2023 12:31:21 +0000

Collaboration, Value, and Risk: Vital ingredients for healthcare innovation

Bianca Melzer, Global Clinical Development

Vanco Vlastimi… Wed 31/05/2023 - 14:31

Innovation is at the core of what we do at ��ֳ�, and we believe that it should involve every single member of a team. Collaboration, transparency, and open dialogue with colleagues is key, and we have found that this approach allows for challenge, free flowing of new ideas and creative ideas. ��ֳ�'s success in driving innovation is a testament to the power of teamwork and the value of asking new questions and challenging assumptions regularly.

I have found that the positive working environment at ��ֳ� helps foster innovation in the workplace, especially when it comes to working in teams. When team members feel comfortable and supported, they are more likely to share their ideas and perspectives openly. From my experiences at ��ֳ�, collaboration, communication, and trust are critical components of an innovative team environment.

Crucially, we recognize that innovation goes beyond just discovering new medicines. It is also about delivering these medicines effectively to the patients who need them. To achieve this, all ��ֳ� colleagues are committed to regularly asking new questions and testing our understanding, allowing us to continuously improve and make a real impact on patients' lives. This approach allows us to continuously improve our work and make a difference in the lives of patients, ensuring that we are better equipped to meet the needs of patients and drive innovation in the pharmaceutical industry.

However, this approach is not without its risks. ��ֳ� continuously invests in research and development, pushing the boundaries of what is possible. While this process can be challenging my team has found that it can lead to significant rewards in the form of new discoveries and breakthroughs. It is this willingness to take risks that has enabled ��ֳ� to stay at the forefront of innovation in our industry.

To learn more about how innovation drives everything we do visit Innovation is | ��ֳ�

innovation

Innovators Our Science Research and Development

438 Likes

Healthcare Innovation: more than just a eureka moment.

Vanco Vlastimil (��ֳ� S.A.) — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 09:46:51 +0000

Healthcare Innovation: more than just a eureka moment.

Scott Fleming, Global Communications & Company Reputation

Vanco Vlastimi… Wed 29/03/2023 - 11:46

As a society, we tend to think of innovation as a series of big eureka moments. Newton and his falling apple, Archimedes and the golden crown, Marie Curie and her discovery of radioactivity. And while this is a romantic view on science, it’s rarely representative of the lengthy and continuously evolving approach to research and development in medicine.

Scientific discoveries rarely come from one person. While many famous discoveries have an equally famous face attached to them, the reality is a sea of faces, a collaboration between diverse scientists, working together to solve current and future problems.

At ��ֳ�, our discoveries rarely come from a single moment, because our patients deserve more. They deserve treatments with years of research, robust testing and constant questioning to ensure we’re never settling for just OK.

Sometimes, the answers won’t come from inside the walls of ��ֳ�, and it’s essential that we show enough humility to know when to bring outside expertise into the equation. Innovation is strategically partnering, investing in meaningful relationships with those who have the additional technology and data capabilities to help what ��ֳ� and our industry can do for patients and society.

Our partnerships with technology leaders, other pharma and academic institutions allow us to focus on cutting-edge pharmaceutical research, enabling scientists from industry and academia to work together to develop innovative medicines to treat serious diseases in immunology and neurology.

Significant and meaningful discoveries come in many different shapes and sizes, over years of hard work, through use of developing technologies, and the efforts of diverse teams. Innovation is pushing boundaries with a purpose and thoughtful intent, to create value for people living with severe diseases, to help improve the health and wellbeing of the society in which we live. At ��ֳ�, innovation is more than just a eureka moment, we believe it’s a way of life.

To learn more about how innovation drives everything we do visit Innovation is | ��ֳ�.

innovation

Innovators Our Science Research and Development collaboration

399 Likes

Pioneering new and innovative approaches to drug discovery

Vanco Vlastimil (��ֳ� S.A.) — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 07:08:30 +0000

Pioneering new and innovative approaches to drug discovery

Scott Fleming, Global Communications & Company Reputation

Vanco Vlastimi… Thu 09/06/2022 - 09:08

Based on a deep understanding of disease biology and patient needs our researchers are constantly looking to evolve and improve ��ֳ�’s science, knowledge, and capabilities to help us continuously innovate. As part of our innovation efforts, we will monitor for new disruptive technologies and expand our therapeutic modality platforms to provide our scientists with access to state-of-the-art technologies that can help them pioneer new approaches to drug discovery.

That’s why the Roswell innovation and our collaboration is so exciting. Their new and disruptive technology (recent peer-reviewed article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [PNAS]) ‘digitizes biology’ and potentially enables analysis of molecular interactions not available with current tools and could increase the scale of molecular screening – in effect we can observe molecular interactions which could allow us to discover better medicines.

Roswell’s Molecular Electronics Chip™, developed by Roswell and a team of multi-disciplinary academics, uses single molecules as universal sensor elements in a circuit to create a programmable biosensor with real-time, single-molecule sensitivity and a scalable array architecture - effectively integrating single molecules into electronic chips to achieve miniaturization of bio-electronics. The sensor architecture enables precise electronic measurement at the single-molecule level for applications that range from basic discovery and translational research to precision diagnostics and whole-genome sequencing.

innovation

Roswell Research and Development biosensors Bio-electronics

486 Likes

Let’s Get Digital! A look at ��ֳ�’s digital transformation in R&D

Vanco Vlastimil (��ֳ� S.A.) — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 11:22:17 +0000

Let’s Get Digital! A look at ��ֳ�’s digital transformation in R&D

Lévina Caufriez, Research & Development Communications

Vanco Vlastimi… Wed 30/03/2022 - 13:22

Around the world, technology is changing how patients experience healthcare, how healthcare professionals practice medicine, and how pharmaceutical companies like ours conduct research and provide medicines to those who need them. Research and development is at the very heart of what we do here at ��ֳ�, and we are amplifying the power of scientific innovation through digitalisation to create sustainable value, ensuring that patients get the solutions they need and can live the lives they choose.

Creating patient value in a digital age

At ��ֳ�, our central mission is to deliver value for people living with severe immunological and neurological diseases now and into the future. To do this, we've recognised that leveraging digital technology throughout the business is not just a choice but a necessity; it allows us to think outside the box and create transformative projects that meet patients where they are. Our Digital Care Transformation (DCTx) approach aims to use data and technology with purpose throughout the whole value chain, for both drug and non-drug solutions, as we know patient value extends beyond the molecule.

Today’s patients consider themselves as active participants in their care journey; they are increasingly demanding more personalised and convenient healthcare solutions. To meet these demands, we’re creating digital initiatives that unlock holistic, personal and efficient value – generating value for patients from more than just drugs.

Embracing digital business transformation to accelerate solutions

��ֳ� is making strides through digital business transformation to boost the efficiency and effectiveness of our operations, creating new – or modifying existing – processes and tools to deliver additional value for patients and stakeholders.

Discovery

In drug discovery, we’re implementing digital business transformation initiatives with the aim of increasing the speed at which we deliver solutions to patients. The ��ֳ� Moonshot effort, developed in partnership with PostEra – a start-up biotech company that maps routes for drug synthesis using AI algorithms – is working to test and refine crowdsourced drug designs, sourced from medicinal chemists, to develop an anti-viral treatment for COVID-19.

The initiative is not only providing better research data-driven insights to fast-track the discovery of therapeutic molecules and improve patient journeys, but also helping to find “pockets” that may not have been seen before and re-envision “undruggable targets”.

Efficiency

The last decade has introduced new computational methods which increase the cost-effectiveness and efficiency in the pharmaceutical industry. The digitalisation of patient records and clinical trials, the advent of cloud computing, the growth of wearable devices and the medical Internet of Things (mIoT) has transformed clinical development with an explosion of data.

In development phase, our Statistical Science & Innovation group at ��ֳ�, recently filed a patent application centred around an improved machine learning method. The application has been designed to search through a large hypothesis space to identify the most valuable pieces of information and allows AI to predict an outcome or provide decision guidance. This innovation has already been used to inform patient stratification, clinical trial design and precision medicine approaches for Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy.

Being Data-Enabled

At ��ֳ� we use data analysis to answer questions and inform better decisions on behalf of patients and caregivers, which has had a tremendous impact on how we work, as well as how efficiently we can deliver results. For example, the use of analytics and machine learning throughout our drug discovery, development, and innovation processes means we can optimise the way clinical trials are designed. This includes patient selection, automated analysis of trial data and enhanced logistics operations. All this work is expanding, allowing ��ֳ� to build a platform to maximise the value of our data for patients.

Connected

Collaboration is an important component of innovation and scientific breakthroughs within ��ֳ�, which is why we partnered with several of the top digital health companies in 2021.

One key example is our partnership with Microsoft, which combines our deep knowledge in bioscience with Microsoft’s unmatched expertise in computer science and artificial intelligence (AI) to reinvent how we create new medicines. The ambition is to establish a 360° data-enabled view of patient populations to discover and develop medicines faster for people living with severe diseases. This collaboration opportunity with Microsoft will provide AI technology to work alongside ��ֳ�’s scientists and data specialists, to break boundaries and allow ��ֳ� to discover new correlations and patterns critical to finding innovative and highly individualized medicines.

At ��ֳ� we are committed to refining and evolving our digital research and development strategy with partners and collaborators, to best serve patients who are the driving force of our motivation for all that we do. The opportunity and challenge is to be continuously innovating and intensely curious as industry leaders to create patient value in the digital age.

about ucb

R&D Research and Development Digital Transformation DCTx COVID Moonshot AI Microsoft

806 Likes

How AI is accelerating the development of new treatments for specific patient populations

eCMSadmin — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

How AI is accelerating the development of new treatments for specific patient populations

Herman de Prins, Information Technology

eCMSadmin Mon 28/06/2021 - 02:00

Make sure to listen to the full episode on any of the following platforms:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) will only grow in importance for the health and life science industry. We already see it as really valuable for helping us develop new treatments for people – and faster. Before I delve into the possibilities and challenges that AI brings, let me take you back to when I first became interested in AI.

Watson intrigued me
I remember seeing one specific episode of the Jeopardy! game show on TV at some point during 2011. IBM’s Watson computer beat America’s best players. That intrigued me. Just a month later, I got chatting to John Kelly – IBM’s Head of Research and father of Watson – at a conference. We talked excitedly about the possibilities of AI.

By the time a few months had passed, we had already built a joint AI project. Watson used cognitive computing – specifically patient similarity analytics and real-world data – to predict potential outcomes and identify personalized care for people living with epilepsy.

We quickly saw incredible enthusiasm for AI grow across ��ֳ�. As a result, we applied for a couple of patents, primarily as recognition of our employees’ great work.

We wanted to bring every ��ֳ� employee with us on our AI journey. So, in 2016, we created a technology practice, a practice that later became our ‘DataMinds and DigiMinds program’. The program helped increase digital understanding and capabilities at ��ֳ�, specifically around data literacy and digital business transformation.

I put the fantastic number of AI initiatives we’re seeing at ��ֳ� today down to that program, initiatives that span the whole value chain.

Amazing AI initiatives
You only have to look at our Moonshot initiative, a joint initiative we worked on with Microsoft last summer. Combining our AI algorithms with Microsoft’s massive compute power allowed us to research potential treatments for COVID at an accelerated speed. Thanks to AI, we completed research that would typically take six months in just three days.

More generally, I’m convinced that AI can play a significant role in developing the COVID vaccines and potential treatments we see today. But that’s not specific to COVID; I’m seeing the whole pharma industry embracing AI.

Looking to the future, I believe there will be massive – and sometimes scary – advances with AI on many fronts. Take GPT-3, a language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text. GPT-3 already uses 175 billion machine learning parameters, ten times as much as the technology we mainly see today. Putting such capacity and capability into a robot is just huge.

Proceeding with caution
I also see AI becoming more embedded in technology products in such a way that it won’t always be obvious what’s AI and what’s not. So there needs to be a set of rules around that, and the European Commission is working on those.

Other significant issues around AI need to be addressed, including ethical issues, data privacy issues and bias in both the algorithm and the data. Every dataset, every algorithm inherently has a bias, which means every AI initiative is based on something biased. You need to be aware of it to overcome it, and we do that by including bias as one of the elements we look at in our ethical reviews.

My biggest interest in AI is what it can help us achieve in R&D, primarily in research. Why? Because AI in research is helping us create a lot of value for our patients. AI is helping us find better treatments for specific patient populations – and do that faster than before.

innovation

AI Research and Development Artificial Intelligence

863 Likes

Research and Development

Closing the gap between the scientist and the patient

Patient Involvement in Research

Patient Involvement in Healthcare Innovation

Driving Innovation Forward

Leave a Comment

Collaboration, Value, and Risk: Vital ingredients for healthcare innovation

Leave a Comment

Healthcare Innovation: more than just a eureka moment.

Leave a Comment

Pioneering new and innovative approaches to drug discovery

Leave a Comment

Let’s Get Digital! A look at ��ֳ�’s digital transformation in R&D

Leave a Comment

How AI is accelerating the development of new treatments for specific patient populations

Leave a Comment

Research and Development

Closing the gap between the scientist and the patient

Patient Involvement in Research

Patient Involvement in Healthcare Innovation

Driving Innovation Forward

Leave a Comment

Collaboration, Value, and Risk: Vital ingredients for healthcare innovation

Leave a Comment

Healthcare Innovation: more than just a eureka moment.

Leave a Comment

Pioneering new and innovative approaches to drug discovery

Leave a Comment

Let’s Get Digital! A look at ������ֳ�’s digital transformation in R&D

Leave a Comment

How AI is accelerating the development of new treatments for specific patient populations

Leave a Comment

Let’s Get Digital! A look at ��ֳ�’s digital transformation in R&D