The pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca announced the launch of its new healthtech business Evinova last week. Operating as a separate business unit within AstraZeneca, Evinova will offer AstraZeneca’s tried-and-tested digital clinical trial solutions to other big pharma, biotechs and contract research organisations (CROs).
With Evinova, AstraZeneca aims to optimise clinical trials and reduce associated complexities, time and costs to develop new drugs.
“The future of medicine development can be accelerated with digital solutions. We believe Evinova’s combination of scientific expertise and track record in developing AI-enabled digital technologies at scale provides a real opportunity to fundamentally improve patient care, drive healthcare transformation and reduce carbon emissions.”
-Pascal Soriot, CEO of AstraZeneca
Evinova’s offering
Evinova’s drug development suite will offer three main categories of services to streamline clinical trial design and delivery. They are:
- Unified trial solution:
Evinova will enable clinical trial data collection from primary and secondary endpoints, including digital wearables, sensors and connected medical devices. Its solutions will also support virtual visits, direct-to-patient medical delivery, telehealth and remote monitoring.
- Study design and planning:
This offering will use artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to help clinical teams design optimal clinical trials. It will provide cost estimates and historical data, forecast future trends, estimate a study’s carbon footprint, evaluate patient experience and more to facilitate decision-making.
- Portfolio management:
This tool will give research organisations a complete picture of their portfolio across all phases of drug development. It will also enable tracking trials at global, regional and site levels. Evinova’s predictive algorithms will help study leaders understand any deviations from plans and take appropriate measures to intervene.
“Coming from within the sector and with proven experience, Evinova will… deliver science-based, evidence-led and human experience-driven solutions with the aim of improving patient experience and outcomes.”
– Cristina Duran, President of Evinova
Evinova team and collaborations
Evinova has a head start with 300 employees from across AstraZeneca’s business verticals and is spread across nine countries.
It has strategically collaborated with Parexel and Fortrea, two globally leading CROs, to offer its digital solutions and services to their wider customer bases.
Evinova is also set to collaborate with Accenture and Amazon Web Services to accelerate industry adoption and expand the global reach of its services.
What makes Evinova a strong player?
Evinova’s offerings are tried and tested in AstraZeneca’s sponsored trials conducted in over 40 countries, with insights from thousands of patients and clinical researchers.
It draws from and builds upon AstraZeneca’s years of expertise in developing novel therapeutics, including its clinical and regulatory experience with digital technology.
Will AstraZeneca lose its competitive advantage with Evinova?
The current drug research market is faced with several challenges. The cost of bringing new drugs to the market is rising and is currently close to $2 billion. Studies show that 80% of clinical trials fail to meet recruiting timelines. They indicate the underrepresentation of marginalised racial and ethnic groups, women, and other populations in clinical trials.
Apart from this, Deloitte’s analysis of the top 20 global pharma companies earlier this year revealed a drastic decline in projected return on investment for research and development. It fell from 6.8% in 2021 to 1.2% in 2022.
These findings indicate the critical need to increase the adoption of digital technologies to reduce costs, enhance efficiency and improve clinical trials.
It may seem like AstraZeneca is losing its competitive advantage by sharing its trial expertise with other pharma businesses through Evinova. However, this will only accelerate drug development and allow the industry to grow faster together.
“Together, we can accelerate the delivery of life-changing medicines, improve the design and delivery of clinical trials for better patient experiences and outcomes, and think more holistically about patient care before, during and after treatment.”
– AstraZeneca
