Yvonne Duckworth, CRB’s director of digital technology, says she was fortunate to enter the pharmaceutical industry straight out of college. “My first job, 31 years ago, was a wonderful opportunity as an automation engineer with an engineering company servicing the pharmaceutical industry,” she said. Duckworth has maintained her pharma focus at CRB, where she has…

Big data and AI offer massive opportunities to the pharmaceutical industry — in theory. In reality, many companies are struggling to realize the potential of these tools. Some organizations have been hesitant or resistant to leveraging the technologies. Others may have attempted to embrace them early on but are now beginning their second or third…

Earlier this fall, the FDA detected potential issues in data generated by two contract research organizations (CROs). Specifically, the agency’s statement noted “significant instances of misconduct and violations of federal regulations, which resulted in the submission of invalid study data to FDA.” Accordingly, the agency advised that all affected sponsor organizations repeat any bioequivalence and…

Digital twins, functional computerized models of physical objects, are a staple of smart manufacturing. Their use in the pharmaceutical industry, however, is still in an early phase. GlaxoSmithKline (LON:GSK) is one of the first pharmaceutical companies to announce a digital twin initiative. Partnering with Siemens (ETR:SIE) and Atos (EPA:ATO), GSK has created a real-time simulation of…

COVID-19 disrupted oncology clinical trials. More than a year into the pandemic, drug developers and regulators, including FDA, are also looking for ways to catalyze clinical trial innovation with AI and other tech. The FDA has been “vigilant as they always are to make sure that there is strong science, but they are much more…

Pharmaceutical and life sciences companies are faced with a constant stream of new data flowing into often siloed information systems. About 80% of that information exists in unstructured text that is difficult to extract and use, despite its paramount importance in driving clinical and commercial outcomes. As a result, these organizations find themselves increasingly overwhelmed…

IBM’s artificial intelligence program Watson is diving deeper into healthcare. The computing giant and Teva Pharmaceuticals announced on Wednesday that they were taking their ongoing health partnership into new territory. First, the companies formed a three-year research collaboration aimed at using human input, real-world data, and machine learning algorithms to support drug repurposing efforts, wrote…