Latest News

BREAKING NEWS: MMS partners with MIT Julia Lab and University of Maryland to create the Health Analytics Collective

Members of the Health Analytics Collective: (left to right) Mohamad Zahreddine, Michelle Gayari, Duane Robinson, Uma Sharma, Vijay Ivaturi, Kelly Hill, Joga Gobburu, Alan Edelman, and Prasad Koppolu, gather at MMS Holdings in Canton, Michigan.

Originally published by MIT News.

The timeline to market a new drug or medical device, from the point of discovery to U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval, can stretch to a decade. By pooling its industry experience and technology, a new health research supergroup led by the Julia Lab within the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory aims to significantly shorten the approval process for pharmaceutical and health care groups.

The team aims to leverage real-world evidence, observational data that are generated during routine clinical practice, and patient health care databases to augment label claims and/or support new drug applications with leading-edge software and algorithms and a depth of regulatory and clinical experience.

Calling themselves the Health Analytics Collective, the team includes MMS Holdings of Canton, Michigan, a data-focused contract research organization (CRO) to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries; and the Center for Translational Medicine (CTM) at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, where the team will be based.

To cut down on the number of required clinical trials, the team compares effectiveness claims for similar drugs in development, examines available evidence from existing data, assesses available treatments, identifies treatment gaps, and evaluates patient risks. To process all of these data, the team relies on Julia, an MIT-incubated programming language designed to solve massive computational problems quickly and accurately, and the use of real-world evidence.

“The field of using real-world evidence in pharmaceuticals is new and the methods are still evolving,” says Alan Edelman, Julia co-founder and professor of applied mathematics. “We created this collective to forecast the future in health care and make critical decisions, giving data a longer life of more than just one use.”

Joga Gobburu, CTM’s director and a former U.S. Food and Drug Administration scientist, has spent years analyzing experiments and clinical trials to advise key drug development decisions. “[Real-world evidence] is new and challenging,” he says. “There is much research required to inform technical methodology and regulatory policy.”

The team members expect to create unique insights from data curation, data analytics, reporting, and regulatory submissions services for pharmaceutical companies, hospital and health care systems, and universities. By combining real-world evidence with their knowledge of areas lacking regulatory precedence, the team is available to guide a company’s business decisions with insights into an asset’s life-cycle management and due-diligence efforts in order to slash the development period of lifesaving drugs.

“Using real-world evidence for the purposes of regulatory drug approvals is an innovative approach that can be applied to support a wide variety of healthcare decisions,” says Uma Sharma, MMS’s chief scientific officer. “This group’s combined efforts will give sponsors of clinical trials the ability to bring safe, life-changing therapies to patients much more quickly.”

The team is riding a wave of big-data investments in the health care and pharmaceutical industries from hardware, software, and professional services, with revenues expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of more than 15 percent annually, rising to $5.8 billion by the end of 2020.

Read the full article here: http://news.mit.edu/2019/julia-lab-joins-team-speed-drug-approval-process-0125

Suggested For You

news

July 15th, 2021

Health Data Research UK Selects MMS as Data Services Partner for the International COVID-19 Data Alliance

news

January 29th, 2021

MMS Holdigns Joins DTRA as A Founding Member to Accelerate The Adoption of Patient- Focused

news

March 4th, 2020

MMS Holdings To Debut Datacise Integrated Safety Explorer To Detect Safety Signals

news

November 2nd, 2018

Chris Hurley Asked to Renew Three-Year Term as Americas Director of Leading Data Sciences Organization PhUSE

news

April 4th, 2024

MMS Hires Pharmaceutical Industry Veteran James Zee for Global Biometrics Leadership in Europe Amid Strong Regional Growth

news

August 16th, 2022

Together Trial with EDC Database Designed by MMS Wins Trial of the Year

news

June 7th, 2022

MMS Holdings Announces Partnership with Medidata to Provide Medidata’s Advanced Rave EDC and Decentralized Clinical Trial Solutions to Sponsors

news

May 24th, 2022

MMS Holdings Selects THREAD as Partner of Choice to Deliver Decentralized Clinical Trials

news

November 19th, 2021

Former Astellas VP of Biostatistics Joins MMS as Principal Advisor of Biostatistics

news

July 28th, 2021

Data CRO Expands its Virtual Learning Portfolio

news

May 19th, 2020

University of Michigan School of Information Invites MMS Holdings Executive Kelly J. Hill to Join External Advisory Board

news

November 20th, 2019

MMS Holdings Doubles Growth In South Africa Region