‘Art of the possible’ - Talking IT with Quintiles’ CIO
Quintiles CIO Bill Deam
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RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – The achievement of making the InformationWeek 500 for IT innovation is something that means quite a bit to the staff at Quintiles and Bill Deam, its chief information officer.
Not only did Quintiles make the list for the first time in the 21-year history of the prestigious compilation but it also came in 50th. The honor is the latest in a series for Quintiles in IT. Deam, who also is an executive vice president at the global provider of services to life science companies, talked with Local Tech Wire about the “500” honor and the role IT plays at the company.
What factors led to Quintiles achieving this ranking.
The InformationWeek recognition is linked to the fact that Quintiles itself has a vision for dramatically improving its service offerings. Part of that debate is about what future business models should look like. Quintiles IT is actually making contributions to the debate, not just responding to requests. We’re acting as a partner to the business, not as a responder, and are aligning our activities with those of Quintiles’ business units.
We have a strategy for developing the technology platform which is aligned with the business itself. We can help visualize new models for clinical development. Quintiles’ breadth and agility are key assets. We are built to deliver in an environment where change is constant.
The innovation Quintiles IT brings is based in teaching the “art of the possible.”
IT obviously is becoming more important to Quintiles – what are some of the key reasons?
One of the reasons IT is increasingly important to Quintiles is that the integration of multiple data sources is becoming more strategically important. Likewise, new technology platforms are required to extract insights from the available data. Now we can integrate both processes and data. We can increase productivity and provide access to data which wasn’t previously seen as valuable.
Connectivity technology allows us to integrate our processes with those of our customers in a much more effective manner. Today, Quintiles can act as an ally to customers, utilizing our technology platform collaboratively to deliver on common goals.
A number of Quintiles’ customers have direct access to clinical performance metrics. When something happens during a clinical trial, we both see one source of the truth, both at the same time.
Many people in our industry say they’re providing this access, but it often turns out to simply be PowerPoint presentations posted on the web.
Quintiles is actually providing the access. Along with our customers, we can see widely across all geographies of a study and deeply through individual investigator sites.
With emergence of electronic medical records as well as greater regulatory requirements, will the importance of IT only increase in the future and therefore require even more commitment from Quintiles?
The value of electronic medical records (EMR) for our industry is really in the information, not the technology itself. The value comes in helping physicians to prescribe better and more sensible courses of treatment. EMR will have a huge impact on the effectiveness of patient treatment. It’s not so much the technology, but the fact that doctors and industry specialists will both have access to quality and timely information.
What is the significance of this for Quintiles other than a nice recognition – affirmation, status within the industry, reflection of commitment to IT?
The InformationWeek recognition is important because it demonstrates that Quintiles’ IT group is very capable of thinking outside the box to dramatically change the way we conduct clinical trials. It is confirmation that an IT organization can contribute to genuine innovation. In our case, that innovation is a significant change in the way Quintiles does business.
Quintiles is using technology to change the rules for the better of the industry, to empower ourselves to do things we didn’t believe we could do before. It’s not simply being able to articulate the art of the possible. It’s about being able to deliver it.
Copyright 2012 WRAL Tech Wire. All rights reserved.
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