Businesses are racing to leverage the oceans of data generated by life science research and development using advanced data analysis techniques. Below are real-world examples highlighting how the scientists and researchers trying to accomplish seemingly miraculous endeavors are optimizing their efforts through the sophisticated and efficient analysis, management and storage of data, as well as enhancing their team’s ability to engage with it.

 Ginkgo Bioworks uses genetic engineering to produce bacteria for other biotech companies, saving them upfront costs in the initial stages of synthetic biology design. To scale its platform, the company worked with AWS to implement Amazon EBS to store the petabytes of data it needs for analytics. Among many other examples, the system enables Ginkgo to perform genome assembly experiments that used to take 40 hours in four and reduces RNA sequencing datasets from 24 hours to three.

Pharmaceutical giant Novartis worked with global IT consultant Accenture to implement a multi-cloud data analytics platform that touched virtually every part of its business from genomics research and molecular profiling to supply chain and marketing. Novartis said migration to the new platform enabled it to ingest, unify and refine nine terabytes of internal and external data.

SOPHiA GENETICS, the creator of a global data-sharing network supporting research, treatment and drug development, leveraged Starburst to accelerate its data mesh initiative enabling users to make queries across borders. The system resulted in a 900 percent increase in the number of users who are able to access production data and  10-15 percent increase in data availability.

Global consultancy Cognizant engaged with a major pharma client using advanced data science techniques while developing cancer drugs. Cognizant said the drugmaker shortened the overall research process by more than three years, reduced cost per patient by 8 to 10 percent in clinical trials and contributed to an automated data analysis pipeline for other drugs the company was working on.

Maravai LifeSciences, a holding company that encompasses several major brands in pharma, vaccine research and biotech, worked with Slalom Consulting to build a modern data stack of Fivetran, Snowflake and Tableau. The new architecture resulted in Fivetran replicating NetSuite data into Snowflake, and 15 Tableau dashboards presenting critical finance, customer and sales analytics.