Accenture and Merck are building an informatics research platform on Amazon's cloud computing service Amazon Web Services to support data-driven drug development.
The cloud-based platform will provide pharmaceutical, biotechnology and scientific institutions with access to research data from various applications, available through a single set of interfaces with integrated workflow and reporting capabilities. Through the platform, these organizations will be able to aggregate and analyze this data to support the early stages of drug development.
Merck, as one of the early collaborators, will be the first pharmaceutical company to use the platform.
The informatics research platform is part of an ongoing collaboration between management consulting and professional services firm Accenture and AWS through the Accenture AWS Business Group.
"Pharmaceutical and biotech [research and development] is evolving rapidly, with advances in biological sciences generating an increase in the volume and diversity of research data," Brad Michel, managing director of Accenture Scientific Informatics Services, said in an news release. "We are pleased to collaborate with Merck and AWS to launch the platform and associated ecosystem to help our clients accelerate the discovery of new, targeted treatments for patients."