The Pistoia Alliance, a global, not-for-profit alliance that works to lower barriers to innovation in life science and healthcare R&D, has held a virtual roundtable with leaders from global pharma organisations, including Gilead Sciences, Roche, and AbbVie, to discuss learnings to date from COVID-19. Attendees heard a call to action from the president of the Alliance, on the need for more companies to invest in and build on the work of the pharma and life sciences world so far. The participants also discussed the increased willingness to share data among companies but drew attention to the need for better collaboration infrastructure to make widespread data sharing a reality.
There was broad agreement among the panel on the need for a centralised data platform or repository to be developed where companies can share pre-competitive data easily. Several of the panel members agreed that getting data ‘back' from partners due to a lack of infrastructure had been a challenge. There was also consensus on the need to remove barriers to sharing information outside of the pharma ecosystem – for example to encourage data sharing between pharma companies and those in chemicals, technology, manufacturing, and supply chain, amongst others. This was further underlined by the discussion between the panel that all nations have faced huge challenges pulling together the various moving parts needed to get national testing programs up to speed. Finally, the participants also referenced the long-term impact that COVID-19 is set to have by discussing its influence on plans for the ‘next pandemic’ currently being made.
Looking to the future, digital technologies will be key to further breakthroughs and particularly important to help overcome the limitations caused by social distancing. The Pistoia Alliance launched a collaborative project in Summer 2020 to explore technology for collecting data during clinical trials in pursuit of the goal. Other digital technologies that can be applied during COVID-19 must also be investigated. Data collection and symptom monitoring will be critical to efforts to treat COVID-19.
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