The clinical research industry plays a pivotal role in bringing new drugs and therapies to market by helping pharmaceutical and biomedical firms boost the odds of clinical trial success. Clinical research organizations (CROs) act as the data repositories that collect and analyze vast amounts of data generated from global trials, patient profiles, drug composition, and drug-to-drug interactions, enabling pharmaceutical firms to make informed decisions in a clinical trial. The ability to efficiently handle and analyze data is crucial for timely decision-making, ensuring regulatory compliance, and enhancing patient outcomes, while balancing operational costs.
For a global CRO, outdated and fragmented data management systems hindered meeting these business objectives.
Cost strains, siloed data put market edge on the line
Operating in over 50 countries, the client had its data dispersed across more than 125 disparate sources, including internal databases, file transfer systems, and external vendor feeds. This made it increasingly difficult to manage, analyze, and act on critical clinical information, while escalating data management costs resulted in financial strain.
Moreover, the reporting processes relied heavily on manual spreadsheets, which slowed decision-making and created operational inefficiencies. The existing systems were outdated and lacked the scalability needed to support advanced analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), or predictive modeling, risking the client’s market edge.
Single source of truth powers faster access to insights
The client realized the need for modernized data operations and turned to Persistent for its data engineering expertise and deep domain knowledge.
We began by consolidating the client’s siloed data across geographies and source systems with Databricks, powered by Azure, creating a unified data environment. Deploying Azure Data Factory, we helped the client seamlessly transfer data from legacy systems and external partners while setting up real-time data capture for operational feeds. We also created a cloud-based Azure Data Lake as a consistent, secure, scalable repository that replaced the manual, siloed tracking processes.
With a consolidated data foundation, Persistent introduced a modern reporting and analytics layer using Power BI to deliver interactive, real-time dashboards that replaced cumbersome spreadsheets. With fully automated reporting processes, the client reduced effort and minimized errors while providing faster access to insights that could directly impact clinical trial operations and patient outcomes.
Boosting the odds of a successful clinical trial within budget
Persistent’s strategic guidance, deep engineering expertise, and focus on accelerating outcomes transformed a fragmented, outdated system into a modern, intelligent data environment.
Consolidating information from over 125 data sources drastically simplified data management and governance, reducing costs by 85% as legacy tools were replaced with cloud-native Microsoft Azure services.
The client increased productivity by 30% with embedded automation and improved access to analytics. Project result delivery times improved by 70%, with intuitive, automated dashboards providing faster, clearer insights to inform decision-making.
Beyond operational gains, the transformation laid the groundwork for the future. The scalable, cloud-first infrastructure enabled the organization to prepare for advanced AI-driven insights and predictive analytics that significantly impact the odds of a successful clinical trial, positioning it to stay ahead in a data-intensive, rapidly evolving industry.
