28.05.2021

How XAOP facilitates biopharma co-opetition through information sharing innovation

by Bram Weytjens

In business, competitors are often reluctant to share data with each other. While this is logical for data that is commercially sensitive, sharing non-commercially sensitive data has the potential to accelerate an industry as a whole.

This is what the PRISME forum has realised too. The PRISME forum is the de facto R&D IT leadership group of the global biopharmaceutical industry. Currently, over 40 different biopharmaceutical companies worldwide participate in this forum to gain insights into how the industry is using software and IT infrastructure to support their R&D activities.

About Bram

Bram is all about connections. With a doctorate in bio-informatics on network-based analysis, he loves turning data into graphs so even people without doctorates can easily understand them. When he’s not in front of his computer, you can find him in his basement brewing beer. We should get a hold of some of those beers soon to find out if they’re any good.

Approach

The PRISME Forum organizes 3 meetings each year (one in the Fall, the Spring, and at the end of the year) where members gather to share information about data and data management within their respective companies. XAOP has been working with the PRISME Forum to assist with some of this information exchange through the development of cloud-based software which helps to manage some of the information that is collected and shared. This provides an organized and structured platform that enables the members to share data in a uniform and secure way.

Results

The members have been very pleased with the results of the development effort managed by XAOP. Feedback has been very positive.

The results of this collaboration by XAOP with the PRISME Forum has allowed the consortium to spot and analyse trends in IT within their industry. An example of this was an examination of the industry’s move to the cloud. It became clear that companies were switching from on-premise infrastructure to cloud-based solutions and the members could examine the data collected on this topic to facilitate effective discussions.

The percentage of processes that were reported to operate in the cloud, by business unit. Note that the CMC business unit was only included as from 2017