The Parexel-Microsoft partnership announced in October has reaped its first crop: Perceptive Cloud, a cloud platform with Parexel’s informatics solutions now built on the enhanced cloud infrastructure of Microsoft Azure.
First landing on the new platform are Impact clinical trial management systems (CTMS), DataLabs electronic data capture (EDC), Liquent InSight regulatory information management (RIM), study start-up and managed access programs. Ultimately, all of Parexel's Parexel’s portfolio of informatics solutions will be moved to the cloud, Paul Bidez, the company's VP of regulatory and clinical solutions told FierceCRO.
Perceptive Cloud represents the first milestone of the alliance between Parexel and Microsoft, in which Microsoft is offering its expertise in cloud services and user experience designs to combine with Parexel’s biopharma industry knowledge. Such transformative digital technologies and services will first promote effective data sharing, but the two companies’ goals lie in advanced analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities to streamline drug development.
RELATED: Parexel aims for R&D excellence with Microsoft tie-up
Life sciences organizations and companies face an increasing amount of data from multiple sources, but because conventional, disparate systems simply digitize the old paper-based processes, the drug development process, if not costing more time, is at least not speeding up to an ideal rate, said Bidez.
“Parexel Informatics delivers technology solutions to help optimize patient engagement, clinical and regulatory processes, and provide analytics and visualization for all 40+ data-driven services under Parexel’s Connected Journey,” he said. “By migrating Parexel Informatics’ technologies and solutions that support the Connected Journey services to the Perceptive Cloud, our clients will be able access more seamlessly connected, meaningful data-driven insights and critical intelligence that will enable them to make better informed decisions that will ultimately enhance their drug development journeys.”
The Parexel-Microsoft partnership follows a growing trend in the life sciences industry where companies, including CROs, try to integrate their many technology services and operational modules on a unified, flexible, easy-to-integrate cloud-based platform so data can be communicated smoothly. For example, INC research has mostly chosen Medidata Solutions’ offerings to help manage its study data; IQVIA (previously QuintilesIMS) launched Orchestrated Customer Engagement, a commercial model that brings biopharma companies’ commercial operations together.
Microsoft has recently been making inroads into the healthcare industry. In February, the tech giant launched Healthcare NExT, a new initiative that forms collaborations with healthcare companies that infuse research, AI, cloud computing and industry expertise for product development and healthcare services. “[O]ur goal is to enable a new wave of innovation and impact using Microsoft’s deep AI expertise and global-scale cloud,” wrote Peter Lee, corporate VP of Microsoft Research NExT, in a February blog post.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated with additional responses from Paul Bidez.