Pharmaceutical enterprises making innovation faster and more relevant

Global pharmaceutical enterprises are looking to boost business operations in China in a bid to make innovation faster and more relevant to the market.

Business executives attribute the upbeat prospects in China to a thriving digital landscape, strong on-the-ground demand for innovation as well as government efforts to cut red tape and encourage technological breakthroughs.

In July, German science and technology conglomerate Merck opened its M Lab Collaboration Center in Shanghai－an in-house facility that fosters new drug development and offers customized solutions from services to training.

Albeit being the ninth such hub worldwide, the one-stop, technology and training center houses 13 labs and claims to be the biggest of its kind for Merck. It boasts four new functionalities including supporting food and beverage security-related inspections as well as environmental industries that are exclusive to the China market.

"The M Lab means faster turnaround, lowered costs as no travel out of China is needed, access to a vast network of biologics and bio-development experts within Merck and enhanced customer convenience," said Steve Vermant, managing director of Merck Life Science China.

For instance, in a dedicated research lab into proteins－the fundamental building block of life sciences－the company provides solutions from protein preparation and analysis to a number of relevant research tools. These stand to provide customers in China with hands-on training and support them on method optimization and application extension.

The existing global network of M Labs has reaped gains across the value chain during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, said Ian Carmichael, vice-president and head of bio processing at Merck Life Science China.

"Some of the candidates for drugs or vaccines have been able to accelerate to commercialization because of the work that was done between Merck and the customers in the past. We can go from labs to clinical trials," Carmichael said.

As biopharmaceuticals are a "strategically emerging industry "in China, the M Lab "will not only serve as a hub for the cultivation of industry talent but also accelerate the integration of China's life science value chain as well as promote cross border interaction and collaboration", said Chen Deming, chairman of the China Association of Enterprises with Foreign Investment.

The lab is also ambitious on the digital front. It adopts algorithms in research analytics and adopts visual recognition technologies to identify and label lab objects in an attempt to make scientific research more accurate and efficient.

"We create a smart monitoring system by … integrating cameras with AO (analog output) technologies in research labs so that they relieve researchers from staying on-site all the time, given that many experiments can require days (to complete)," Vermant said.

Also embracing digital technologies is French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi. Through a program that banks on external partnerships and ecosystems in China, the company aims to tap into promising start-ups on digital health initiatives.

During a celebration event earlier this month, Pius S. Hornstein, general manager of general medicines and country chair of Sanofi China, referred to the digital revolution as a "major opportunity to multinational pharmaceutical companies in China", and pledged that the company will team up with Chinese startups to jointly develop digital healthcare projects.

For instance, Sanofi is working with Atman, an AI start-up focused on smart medical language to build a bilingual intelligent medical information platform called Hippo.

Atman CEO Ma Lei said the platform serves as a one-stop solution for medical data monitoring, informatization extraction as well as processing, analysis and generation of medical reports.

"It can support evidence-based formulation of medical strategies, accelerate digital transformation of pharmaceutical companies and eventually help expand user scope," Ma said.

In another example of streamlined online physician consultation processes, which conventionally involve redundant works such as answering repeated questions, Sanofi joined hands with start-up firm Emotibots, which is known for its research in emotional computing.

"Our joint invention leads to a new online consultation platform that equips doctors with auto-reply functions and turns spoken language into structured language for AI to understand in real time and give a response, which saves a lot of trouble for physicians," said Jerry Gao, an innovation manager of internet hospitals at Sanofi China.

Ted Lai, chief digital officer at Sanofi China, believes China will lead the world in digital healthcare in a couple of years thanks to a combination of factors, including strong government support, a very robust innovative ecosystem of startups and big tech companies, the availability of patient data and the rollout of its 5G infrastructure.

Merck's Vermant said agile policy adjustment in China offers fast-track access to research materials that were previously unavailable. "This definitely serves the academy and makes innovation faster."