Accenture, an Ireland-based global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, has launched Accenture Life Sciences Cloud for R&D, which speeds clinical development, helps improve patient outcomes and creates greater R&D efficiency through a new single analytics platform that brings together multiple internal and external data sources across clinical, safety, regulatory and operational functions.

In parallel with the R&D platform, Accenture has formed a Life Sciences Cloud Coalition, which includes Eisai, Merck and Pfizer. The aim of this group is to collaborate to bring innovation to the Accenture Life Sciences Cloud and digitally enable the R&D function, speed up the drug development process and improve quality and cost for the industry.

The Accenture Life Sciences Cloud for R&D is part of Accenture Accelerated R&D Services, a business service focused on building more efficient and effective R&D models, partnering with the industry from early clinical trials to regulatory approvals and throughout the product lifecycle.

"With the cost of healthcare—particularly for drug development—escalating faster than the gross domestic product of nearly every economy around the world, pharmaceutical companies are facing huge pressure to seek efficiencies in R&D," said Kevin Julian, managing director of Accenture Accelerated R&D Services. "New technologies, analytic capabilities and a willingness by drug manufacturers to collaborate can help mitigate rising costs. These can be leveraged to provide a much clearer view of the clinical results by collecting and analyzing data and information in real time—beginning with the development cycle."

The foundation of the Accenture Life Sciences Cloud for R&D is an alliance between Accenture and Oracle. The solutions developed by the alliance are built on a combination of Oracle's experience in developing and hosting mission-critical Clinical Data Warehousing and analytics applications for life sciences, coupled with Accenture's experience delivering best-in-class service-based solutions. The Accenture Life Sciences Cloud for R&D utilizes Oracle datacenters around the globe to host clinical applications such as Oracle Life Sciences Data Hub and Oracle Clinical Development Analytics.

Key features of the Accenture Life Sciences Cloud for R&D include:

• Clinical Trial and Scientific Data Warehouse for storing, managing, searching and reporting on patient data to improve strategic decision making, including spotting promising drugs earlier and decreasing investment in drugs that may not succeed.
• Operational Data Warehouse for gathering vital metrics to monitor clinical trial portfolios, manage vendor relationships and address any operational issues.
• Information eXchange Hub to provide an integration and security layer to manage users, data sources, on-premise systems and other cloud providers to support a virtual, seamless aggregation of data.
• Scalable, secure, regulatory-compliant cloud platform utilizing Oracle Engineered Systems hosted in Oracle datacenters. The platform is available as a private cloud and designed for both large- and small-scale implementations with the ability to handle high data volumes and service level requirements.