8 TECH OUTLOOKMarch 2016The Next Big Thing in Pharma and Life science industryBenefits of Cloud Computing for the Pharma and Life Sciences Industry The Pharma and Life sciences industry is an information processing business first and a product manufacturing and distribution business second. With the advent of cloud computing infrastructure as a service, "Big Data" technologies and analytic methodologies, scientific research is being transformed from the days of high cost, time and labor intensive biomolecular candidate screening techniques, to targeted computer driven molecular candidate identification, thereby saving many millions of dollars and years of time off the early pre-clinical research landscape. As promising candidates progress to human trials, the benefits of cloud computing continue as well. Much of the human trial clinical data capture, document management and statistical analysis application space offerings are now available as software as a service solution (SaaS) deployed through cloud infrastructures. A Pharma or biotech startup today would find it difficult to justify building out and staffing a wholly owned and operated computing and software infrastructure, with all the subsequent and required validation and change control documentation needed in a regulated industry. It is far more cost and time efficient to simply "rent" a secure, validated and regulatory compliant infrastructure when necessary to meet a research goal or objective. There is really no good business justification to purchase hardware and software that would sit idle the vast majority of time. Nor does it make sense for a Biotech or pharma company to employ an army of IT specialists. While IT is strategic to life sciences, IT in itself is not the focus. Moving life-improving and life-saving biopharmaceutical products through the phases of research and regulatory approval "IS" the business. In order to offer the most efficient high quality services, ACI Clinical has embraced a cloud computing strategy. As demand for our clinical endpoint adjudication software and services grow, our move to the cloud was imperative, so we can easily "dial up" the scale and performance. An elastic cloud infrastructure can expand or contract with By Mark Williams, VP & CIO, ACI ClinicalMark WilliamsIn My Opinion
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