Pharma R&D teams have always relied on international partnerships to speed up their programs towards the clinic. In the last decades, the nature of these global partnerships has been shifting, thanks to cloud computing services that enable deeper, more involved collaboration.
The features of a lab’s research management software can have an impact on every aspect of R&D from early discovery to getting regulatory approval. For organizations that want to take advantage of these new opportunities, this article outlines guidelines for implementing cloud-based platforms that address some of the biggest challenges of international collaboration.
Cloud Computing for International Collaboration
One of the biggest technical obstacles to pharma R&D collaborations is securely managing data in a way that allows teams in different geographic locations to access and use. We all want the days of mailing hard drives to be over. But many teams still struggle to find feasible alternatives.
Traditional on-premise tools and systems were often built around the assumption that all users would be working from the office or, at least using laptops provided by a single IT department. So a security perimeter was built around the company’s network and then extended to the company’s hardware using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).
Partners at other companies, however, won’t be working from the same office or using hardware provided by the same IT department. So the perimeter on which this security framework relies separates partners instead of protecting the collaboration.
Cloud computing platforms, on the other hand, are built on the assumption that users will be spread across the world, accessing data and services from their own hardware. So they use different security frameworks designed for this context.
These frameworks allow pharma organizations to build security perimeters around their international collaborations, rather than between them. This article explores what organizations need to consider when doing this.
Selecting a Cloud Platform
There is a wide range of cloud service providers to choose from, with the most common being Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure. Among these, AWS is the most widely used option, both in pharma and more broadly. However, all three have developed specialized capabilities for biology R&D that make them worth considering.
Some cloud-based research lab management software options may only be available on a limited number of cloud platforms, which adds another factor to consider. If your primary lab management software isn’t in your chosen cloud platform, most users won’t notice the difference. However, it could make backend integrations and large data transfers more complex and expensive. Plus it may be difficult for IT teams to validate security requirements on a cloud platform that they aren’t familiar with.
Multi-Cloud and Cross-Cloud Integration
Many larger organizations have adopted multi-cloud solutions to give them more flexibility to choose the partners they work with and what tools they use internally. This flexibility comes with a cost—both the cost of transferring and replicating data and the complexity of coordinating computing infrastructure that wasn’t designed to be coordinated.
If you already have a multi-cloud strategy, this increases the chances that you’ll use the same platform as your partners, which will simplify collaboration. However, working with a partner who uses a different cloud platform isn’t typically sufficient reason to adopt a multi-cloud strategy. Most cloud computing services can facilitate sharing data with partners on other platforms.
When evaluating cloud computing services, your first consideration should be internal needs. The cloud providers used by your partners or potential partners should only be a secondary consideration.
Make the Cloud Transparent to Users
Ultimately, the best way to make an international collaboration facilitated by a cloud computing platform successful is to help users forget they’re even using the cloud.
Users shouldn’t have to worry about whether their data is stored in an on-site data center or distributed across multiple locations. They shouldn’t notice if their data analytics is running on their laptop or on serverless computing. And they shouldn’t care where the servers that make it happen live.To keep the team oblivious to the cloud, you can create cloud-native applications that sit between your users and the cloud. Or you can adopt cloud-native research lab management software off the shelf. Either way, the best cloud is the one that your users don’t notice.
Cloud-Native Security and Privacy
One of the biggest benefits of the three major public cloud platforms is that they take care of most of the security and privacy considerations for you. However, that doesn’t mean you’re completely off the hook: You still need to configure the infrastructure to take advantage of that security and use it as intended.
One of the most common mistakes teams make when migrating to cloud computing resources is to try and directly apply processes and approaches from other contexts. Most of the same functionality that IT teams are familiar with from other kinds of platforms can be implemented using cloud infrastructure. But it usually requires a different way of thinking. Admins who aren’t familiar with this ethos may build workarounds that allow them to use their old design patterns, but at a cost.
In the context of security and privacy, the biggest difference is that cloud platforms rely heavily on encryption key pairs while on-premise security tends to leverage usernames and passwords, with firewalls/VPNs as a backstop. In the short run, it may be easier to implement workarounds that allow teams to use usernames and passwords to access data. But these almost always create security holes and are much harder to maintain long term.
Conclusion
International research collaborations are nothing new for pharma R&D. By carefully selecting the right cloud-based platform, managing cloud-native security, and then making the cloud transparent to users, you can make these collaborations more efficient and deliver faster results.
If you’d like to explore leading-edge tools in this space, check out our article on Top Lab Software of 2024: Elevating Research and Development with Advanced Solutions.
