Moving toward greater digitalization and automation
There continues to be greater investment in transforming early and clinical research – with a push for greater digitalization and automation. Even today, too many manual processes and point solutions dominate the ways of working in research – leading to inefficiencies, poor quality, and redundant costs.
However, the laboratory of tomorrow is possible today. Digitally-connected labs are fueling the acceleration of scientific innovation by unlocking vast new possibilities, especially with the disruption caused by the pandemic in pushing research management to develop different ways to operate. For instance, moving experiment management systems to the cloud means that a researcher can conduct experiments remotely from anywhere using only a web browser. For example, the experiments are programmed through an online interface, then the software coordinates robots and automated scientific instruments to run the experiment. The experiment is setup and scheduled with a workflow software on Friday to run over the weekend and process the data, while researchers enjoy the weekend and review results on Monday. We expect to see cloud lab and automation adoption across environments, from in-vivo and in-vitro labs to the enterprise level, as research organizations realize efficiency and cost benefits.
Development of COVID-19 vaccines proved that significant reduction in cycle times can be achieved. Regulators have collaborated better with private enterprises in developing and accelerating new policies to keep up with the rapid advancement of digital technologies. Cloud capabilities have opened up new possibilities for improving clinical research–from something as simple as using ridesharing services to ease transportation for research participants, to conducting Investigator Meetings in the metaverse. Furthermore, patient centric clinical interaction is nothing new (e.g. mobile nursing, decentralized trials), yet the pandemic has compounded the interest in accelerating the digitalization of clinical trials, which has started to show net benefits. One report notes that in phase II trials, a 1-3 month time savings yielded a net benefit up to five times greater than the upfront investment required, while a similar time savings in phase III trials yielded a net benefit up to 14 times greater[1]. As speed to market becomes a necessity to combat the impact of LOE, we expect to see increased investment in transformative approaches to clinical research and trials.
Joseph Kim, Munaz Muntasir
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