Blue Prism Drives Innovation and Modernization Across Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences Industries

LONDON and AUSTIN, Texas, July 16, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Leading companies in the life sciences and pharmaceutical industries such as Celgene, Merck KGaA, Pfizer, and Pharmaceutical Product Development (PPD) are turning to Blue Prism (AIM: PRSM), a global leader in Robotic Process Automation (RPA), to expand modernization and digitally transform. In industries struggling to keep up with the rapid pace of innovation, using Blue Prism’s connected-RPA platform has helped these companies automate processes, improve speed to delivery and liberate resources. This enables these organizations to then drive faster drug discovery, improve clinical trial efficacy and ensure regulatory compliance.

The drug discovery process in pharmaceutical companies is prohibitively lengthy and data-intensive, with millions of molecules in data libraries and clinical trial duration increasing to an average of 6.8 years¹. As drug development costs soar to a cost of $2.6 billion² for a prescription drug that gets FDA approval, pharmaceutical companies are under pressure to streamline workflows, reduce expenses and improve margins. 

The deployment of Blue Prism’s connected-RPA platform has enabled dozens of world leading life sciences and pharmaceutical development organizations to optimize clinical and operational effectiveness, which empower care teams and employees – while engaging patients and customers. To integrate data and improve manual processes, Celgene Fusion worked with Blue Prism, Appian, and Princeton Blue to build GIGi, the company’s first digital worker. Since GIGi’s launch, Celgene has automated processes that ensure tools and data are in the right hands at the right time and have resulted in decreased cycle times from five days to less than one day.

Pfizer uses connected-RPA to automate a wide range of processes including supporting the production of its clinical study reports. For example, automations around the creation of report visualizations now reduce human error and save the team an estimated 10,000 hours annually. While RPA is often associated with back-office Shared Service, since January 2018, Pfizer has deployed over 47 automations within core operations outside of Global Business Services (GBS). Connected-RPA has been applied to key processes that include FDA compliance, product labelling updates and reconciling shipment documentation.

“The biotech industry faces increased pressure to bring blockbuster treatments to market while somehow lowering prices and outpacing generic patent challenges. In parallel, the number of clinical studies is increasing at a rate 4 – 5x headcount, a frenzy of M&A activities leads to more fragmented systems, all while regulatory bodies consistently move the goal posts,” says Josh Noble, Director of Life Sciences for Blue Prism. “We’re seeing significant customer growth in the application of intelligent automation for safety, R&D, and clinical operations, which enhance workflows and efficiencies, freeing staff to focus on patient-centric services and improved outcomes. Our customers like Covance and PPD are achieving not just bottom-line benefits, but also creating opportunities to differentiate their market offerings and customer experience.”

Another example of how automation can digitally transform was discussed in a recent Blue Prism Café, when James Sheehy, Director of Business Transformation and Projects at Gilead Sciences indicated that, “We could not ignore robotics or intelligent process automation. As a team we wanted to explore if there was value in the application of robotics – that’s when our RPA journey began. So, the key task was building a scalable Digital Workforce to tackle transactional activities and liberate human capacity for other value-add activities.”

Blue Prism’s Digital Workforce supports the workplace with an agile solution that helps companies automate and scale business processes. From appointment setting to patient registration, employee HR services, and clinical trial management, Blue Prism enables secure data collection to make healthcare more efficient, patient centric, and more agile than ever before. For more information on Blue Prism’s solutions for health and life sciences, visit: https://www.blueprism.com/solutions/industry/health-life-sciences.

About Blue Prism
In this digital era where start-ups are constantly disrupting markets, only the most agile and innovative enterprises survive and thrive. At Blue Prism, we pioneered Robotic Process Automation (RPA), emerging as the trusted and secure intelligent automation choice for the Fortune 500 and public-sector market. Now we bring you connected-RPA supported by the Digital Exchange (DX) app store—marrying internal entrepreneurship with the power of crowdsourced innovation.

Blue Prism’s connected-RPA can automate and perform mission critical processes, allowing your people the freedom to focus on more creative, meaningful work. More than 1,300 global customers leverage Blue Prism’s Digital Workforce, empowering their people to automate billions of transactions while returning hundreds of millions of hours of work back to the business. Visit www.blueprism.com to learn more about Blue Prism (AIM: PRSM).

Follow Blue Prism on Twitter @blue_prism and on LinkedIn.

© 2019 Blue Prism Limited. “Blue Prism”, the “Blue Prism” logo and Prism device are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Blue Prism Limited. All Rights Reserved.

¹DiMasi JA, Grabowski HG, Hansen RW. Innovation in the Pharmaceutical Industry: New Estimates of R&D Costs. Journal of Health Economics. 2016; 47:20-33
²DiMasi JA, Grabowski HG, Hansen RW. Innovation in the Pharmaceutical Industry: New Estimates of R&D Costs. Journal of Health Economics. 2016; 47:20-33

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SOURCE Blue Prism