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IT Innovations to Help Discover New Medications

Innovative pharmaceuticals play an irreplaceable role in modern medicine because of their ability to extend human life considerably. Another factor, no less important, is that they improve the quality of life. Because the number of new medicines is decreasing, however, ways are sought of improving the efficiency of the research process.

Tests of the efficiency and safety of new pharmaceuticals last longer, and the approval process is increasingly demanding. The average cost of developing a single new molecule is in excess of one billion US dollars. Notwithstanding that, however, the benefits of new medications are indisputable – thanks to them, among other factors, life expectancy at the beginning of the 21^st century is no less than 25 years higher than it was a hundred years ago.

Today's innovative pharmaceuticals play an increasingly important role in the treatment of civilizational diseases, such as diabetes, an ailment that kills 20,000 patients in the Czech Republic annually. The main benefit of modern medications is that they inhibit the development of complications faced by all diabetes sufferers. The result is not only an improved quality of life for patients, but also economic benefit for society as a whole.

Diabetes treatment in the Czech Republic costs 38 billion crowns annually, where direct costs amount to a "mere" 22 billion. Instead of being invested into medicaments, the bulk of expenditures go into therapy for diabetes-induced complications, particularly surgical treatment, dialysis, hospitalization, and the like. Moreover, there are highly elevated indirect costs, mostly involving social services, which amount to 16 billion crowns. Logically, these expenditures can be reduced if state-of-the-art treatments are applied.

The above reasons are why we seek ways of accelerating the development of pharmaceuticals and try to make it more efficient. One of them involves placing emphasis on IT innovations. A step in that direction has been the opening of the MSD Global IT Innovation Center in Prague. Involving an investment of 1.5 billion crowns, the project has received the CzechInvest Investor of the Year Award in the segment of IT and shared services.

The facility will provide employment for as many as 500 workers by the end of 2015, 95% of them university-educated experts. Among other tasks, their work will focus on analyzing clinical trial data collected over multi-year periods. That will help us understand which approaches have worked best and which have failed as well as the underlying reasons. Data obtained this way will allow fine-tuning the focus of research, avoiding dead-end efforts, and allocating resources to solutions that are most likely to succeed and be of benefit to both patients and society as a whole.

Since May 2015 the MSD Global IT Innovation Center is located in Riverview, a six-story building in the borough of Smíchov in Prague, to join others taking part in the dynamic development of this former industrial district. For more information, consult the article "Employees Assist in Design of MSD Innovation Center". 

MSD is one of the leading global pharmaceutical companies. Operating under the name Merck & Co. in the U.S. and Canada, MSD is the leader in the Czech Republic in biological treatment of rheumatology and gastroenterology, in innovative medications for diabetology, cardiology, and infectology, and in the area of vaccination.

MUDr. Václav Novotný, MBA

Managing Director

Merck Sharp & Dohme s.r.o.

www.msd.cz