A Belgian drugmaker hopes to get a better sense of how its drugs are affecting patient safety through a partnership with a large professional services firm.
Brussels-based UCB Pharma and New York-based Accenture said Monday that the drugmaker would employ INTIENT, Accenture’s pharmacovigilance product, to make processing of individual patient safety reports faster, which would enable UCB to better monitor the safety of drugs already on the market and undergoing clinical trials. INTIENT Pharmacovigilance incorporates real-time artificial intelligence, machine learning and process automation into data management, from the time patients report issues to when they are reported to regulators, potentially enabling faster detection of adverse side effects.
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Pharmacovigilance is one of the biggest areas in which artificial intelligence and machine learning are finding their way into the biopharma industry. Last year, German drugmaker Bayer signed a multi-year deal with New York-based Genpact to provide AI-based pharmacovigilance services. Other companies that offer such services include the Durham, North Carolina-based health information technology and clinical services giant Iqvia and Tata Consultancy Services. Other companies have been leveraging AI technology in the area of drug discovery and development, including Eli Lilly & Co., Germany’s Merck KGaA, Novo Nordisk and others.
Still, some have urged caution. In an Oct. 1 blog post, Joshua Neil, editor for London-based management consulting firm Proventa International, wrote that while AI and ML can remove a lot of the monotonous labor from pharmacovigilance efforts, human skill and the need for data security, precision and validation will remain essential.
“Accenture INTIENT Pharmacovigilance will help us rapidly process data to identify potential events or issues while reducing the time and cost needed to deliver a higher level of patient safety,” said Kristof Huysentruyt, who heads UCB’s safety data management and systems, in a statement. “This solution helps us walk the talk of being patient-driven.”
The companies said that part of the reason for UCB enlisting Accenture’s services is that the data the industry manages often come in many variable forms, from a variety of different sources. Thus, while structured data is easily searchable in databases and well-organized, unstructured data has no predetermined format or organization, making it harder to glean potential scientific insights from it.
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Photo: MF3d, Getty Images
