Quintiles’ big data project earns Computerworld honor – and cover

You can call the big data team at Quintiles the “cover guys” for short.

The world’s largest life science services firm is crunching big data in thousands of ways with the goal of helping clients develop and deliver drugs more quickly. Its “Infosario” project is one of 12 winners in Computerworld’s first “Data+ Editor’s Choice Awards.” To sweeten the honor, Q’s data team is featured on the magazine’s cover.

Quintiles’ stock may not get a lot of respect, as CNBC’s Mad Money says, but on the data side the story is different. The company is huge with more than 27,000 employees worldwide and gathers data for clinical trials as well as other data by the gigabyte every few moments. And as Quintiles points out: ”We have helped develop or commercialize all of the top-50 best-selling drugs on the market.”

(Featured on the cover, by the way, are:

Gavin Nichols – Vice President, IT
Kris Gustafson – Vice President, IT
Tim Clayton – Director, IT
Joe Goodgame – Head of Information Center of Excellence
John Poonnen – Director, IT)

Computerworld praised Quintiles’ project:

“For the past four years the Durham, N.C.-based company has worked to create an integrated suite of software modules to handle all phases of drug research, development and trials.

“Its software platform, Infosario, integrates the data and processes associated with a drug’s life cycle and includes a data engine to collect, clean and prepare data for analysis. The data can be combined with clinical research data and information from other sources to provide predictive analysis.”

Here’s how Quintiles describes Infosario: “Infosario is able to break down silos combining massive quantities of scientific and operational data collected during clinical development with tens of millions of real-world patient medical records and population data. Empowering researchers and drug developers with the knowledge locked in this data improves decision making, and ultimately increases the probability of success at every step in a product’s lifecycle.”

One-on-One

In an exclusive Q&A, WRALTechWire talks with Quntiles’ (NYSE: Q) Chief Information Officer Richard Thomas about the project, the importance of data, and the award.

You and your team are one of only 12 winners – you must take great pride in that. What qualities drive your team?

It has taken years to create an industry leading team of dedicated professionals, the recognition is both humbling and a testament to the hard yards of progress we have been able to make.

Proud? Yes, as a team we are delighted with the recognition but our work has only just begun really. The team here is world class – pragmatic, smart, innovative and “all-in” working inside the company and with our customers and partners to help solve some of the problems that the pharma and healthcare industries have wrestled with for decades.

People may still not believe “big data” can affect their own health but doesn’t this program show data is becoming even more important?

Healthcare in the past has largely been administered by highly qualified and experienced doctors. Their wisdom has been virtually impossible to augment in real-time while treating a patient.

Imagine a world where it is routine that a medical professional can create and continuously improve a care plan based on the individual patients make-up enhanced with the collective wisdom of everything mankind knows and has documented about a particular condition, and how it has successfully been controlled.

How do you do this? Data, massive amounts of it. Data about the disease or condition, data defining the individual, data about people like the patient and how they were successfully treated. No individual in healthcare could possibly achieve this type of bridging in their head – this is the power of big data applied to the patient. The best treatment at every point in time. Pharma needs this data to be able to create the right products which can be used to target individuals conditions at every stage in a treatment plan.

The future of healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry is predicated on data. It is no longer in the realm of visionaries and science fiction writers that data can collected and combined with other information, then processed at point of care to significantly improve a patients probability of a successful outcome.

What makes the Quintiles Infosario platform unique?

Infosario is unique in its ability to connect and integrate so many data sources 24×7 across the drug development continuum. Many talk about the theory of achieving this, some have made progress in certain areas. What the team at Quintiles has achieved is unparalleled – as the largest clinical research organization in the world the proof is in how we rely on Infosario every day to run our customers and our own operations.

The future looks very bright given our ability to bring all of this different data together and generate insights which lead to positive outcomes at every level.

What does the inclusion of Quintiles in this Data+ Choice Award group say about the importance of healthcare data and applications to the IT industry in general today and going forward? Can healthcare IT be a trend setter for other data firms to follow?

If you measure success as the worlds population getting access to the best treatment plans customized for each individual – then this award is a very positive step along the way. The promise is very high and I expect we will see many waves of innovation around data to drive new paradigms in drug discovery and development in collaboration with care delivery providers. This is a collaborative endeavor across a wide array of stakeholders, so what better way to power these activities through data and a platform to make sense of it all?

That’s what gets me and the team here at Quintiles motivated to keep driving flat out towards the horizon of new opportunities every day.

Computerworld’s Award

About the awards, Computerworld notes: “These 12 organizations, winners of the first-ever Data+ Editor’s Choice Awards, were well aware that they sat on a goldmine of information. And each in its own way turned those massive data stores into solid business results. … Chosen by a panel of Computerworld editors, these organizations are making better business decisions and, in some cases, generating new revenue streams and tapping into new markets.”

The list of winners: