Roche uses Amazon cloud to accelerate drug discovery and development

Amazon Web Services (AWS), a company of the technology giant Amazon, announced today that the Roche Group is using AWS in most of its cloud processes to extract greater value from health data.

“With profound advances in data, analytics and digital technology, we are transforming the way drugs are discovered and developed and how patient care is delivered. AWS provides us with secure, high-performance cloud solutions that help us ”, commented Dr. Alan Hippe, Roche Group CFO and CIO.

Thus, the company leverages AWS capabilities in high-performance computing, analytics, machine learning, databases, storage and security, and processes health data on a large scale to provide high-quality and personalized care.

Roche also works with AWS Professional Services to integrate its information technology (IT) systems so that it can as needed, both within the company and with interested third parties, such as academic institutions, regulatory agencies, and healthcare providers, whenever in accordance with laws and guidelines for the protection of patient privacy, states the company.

While biopharmaceutical companies have been working on personalized medicine for more than two decades, until recently advances in data, analytics and digital technology have put the healthcare industry in a position to make a major change, he says. Amazon.

Roche uses AWS database and analytics services such as Amazon OpenSearch Service (AWS ‘service for searching, viewing, and analyzing petabytes of unstructured text and data) and Amazon Aurora (AWS’ relational database built for the cloud and compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL) for and from real-world patients.

With AWS, Roche can examine health data at scale, the health system in general, as well as drug efficacy and interactions, by analyzing structured patient data sets that Roche aggregates anonymously to protect your privacy. This ability provides company researchers with a more detailed understanding of patient biology in larger populations of individuals and can help them identify patterns and outliers to support the development of diagnoses and treatments.

“With AWS, we are using health data as new ways to better detect, diagnose, treat, monitor and manage disease more effectively and efficiently for the benefit of patients.” indicates Hippe, who ensures that Roche complies with all data privacy laws.

AWS supports Roche in the use of digital technologies, such as smartphone applications, that can help healthcare professionals provide personalized care and enable patients to play an important role in managing their own health. For example, a, such as blood glucose measurements of patients with diabetes. The company also uses the app to automatically extract and analyze data from smart meters and then inform the patient of the dose and time to take a certain drug.

Thus, the firm continuously and securely collects and analyzes patient health data in the cloud, giving the patient and their healthcare providers a more timely and accurate understanding of

It also uses the scalable, high-performance computing capabilities of AWS, along with analytics and container services, such as Amazon Redshift (the AWS cloud data warehousing service), to securely process and extract information from dozens of petabytes of genomic data of more than 300 thousand cancer patients worldwide, with your consent and always maintaining your privacy.

“With AWS powering its research, development and healthcare operations, Roche can deliver timely and relevant data that helps scientists collaborate more safely and effectively with each other, researchers to design more efficient clinical trials, and caregivers. to make decisions with greater precision and to patients to have greater control of their health ”, said Kathrin Renz, vice president of Business and Industry Development for Amazon Web Services.

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