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3 July 2018Big Pharma

Novartis launches Nerve platform to harness ‘data revolution’

Novartis has created a platform called Nerve Live that will tap into its “huge data pool” in order to aid drug development.

The tool uses the latest advances in computing technology and will be used in a number of areas, including clinical trials, according to an announcement yesterday, July 2.

Luca Finelli, whose team within Novartis’s global drug development arm developed Nerve Live, said that “in reality, we are a data company”.

“We are experiencing a data science revolution that we need to harness,” he explained, noting that “if we are able to bring our data into one place and tap into the latest computing technologies, we can generate new insights that in the past were difficult to obtain because our data was locked in silos”.

Work on the platform started in 2015, and Novartis has now created five “user modules” for applying data analytics. One of these covers clinical trials, with data allowing Novartis to select the best sites and enhance other elements of the process.

Novartis said that future developments of Nerve Live could include helping to better manage resources and using predictions to plan the supply of medicines to medical centres.

According to the company, over the past few years digital healthcare has grown exponentially and the amount of data collected by the industry is only set to rise substantially as computing services become more powerful.

While the links between big data and healthcare are well established, much progress has been made.

According to Novartis, it took about ten months and cost about $10 million to sequence a human genome in 2007 but the same process today takes about 24 hours and costs around $1,000 or less.

The Nerve Live announcement came three days after Novartis revealed plans to spin off its eye care devices business Alcon into a standalone company.

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6 September 2018   Novartis has revealed plans to sell the dermatology business and generic US oral solids portfolios of its subsidiary Sandoz US to India-based Aurobindo for $900 million.
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5 July 2018   France-based Sanofi has announced plans to launch a research and development hub in China to focus on digitalisation and big data analysis.

More on this story

Americas
6 September 2018   Novartis has revealed plans to sell the dermatology business and generic US oral solids portfolios of its subsidiary Sandoz US to India-based Aurobindo for $900 million.
Asia-Pacific
5 July 2018   France-based Sanofi has announced plans to launch a research and development hub in China to focus on digitalisation and big data analysis.