Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma and Hitachi collaborating to improve clinical trial efficiency

By Melissa Fassbender

- Last updated on GMT

(Image: Getty/zhudifeng)
(Image: Getty/zhudifeng)
Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma and Hitachi aim to shorten clinical trial timelines and reduce drug development costs through the use of digital technologies, such as AI.

“It’s a great honor for us to collaborate with our customers to improve the efficiency of clinical trials for the development of new drugs,”​ a Hitachi spokesperson told us.

The collaboration will combine Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma’s medical knowledge and drug discovery capabilities, with Hitachi’s manufacturing knowledge and Internet of Things (IoT) platform Lumada. The platform packages together advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning into an open architecture solution.

The spokesperson said the arrangement will enable the companies “to contribute significantly toward helping solve the challenges that come with clinical trials in new drug development.”

As part of the effort, Hitachi will release automated technology for collection of information from medical literature to the pharmaceutical industry in Japan and abroad later in 2018. According to the companies, discussions surrounding automating these processes began early last year.

AI technology, such as natural language processing and deep learning, has shortened information collection time by about 70%, when compared with conventional operations, according to Hitachi.

Moving forward, the companies plan to expand the scope of the collaboration to undertake “a wide range of proof of concept demonstrations related to new drug development,” ​the spokesperson said.

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