Bayer's Future Clinical Trials project, conducted in Finland, has successfully developed new solutions to streamline clinical trials, making them more efficient and data-driven. The project, initiated in 2020, focused on addressing the complexities, costs, and burdens associated with traditional clinical trials, which can take up to seven years and cost an average of two billion euros per prescription drug.
Data-Driven and Patient-Centric Approach
Bernd Heinrich, VP, Head Clinical Data Management and Monitoring at Bayer, noted the challenges of clinical trials, stating, "Clinical trials can be quite burdensome for patients participating in them, and due to the very complex trial setups, the outcomes are not necessarily optimal." The Future Clinical Trials project aimed to mitigate these issues by adopting a data-driven and patient-centric approach.
The project was divided into two main work streams: data science and customer centricity. The data science stream focused on building AI capabilities to improve clinical trial efficiency using real-world data. The customer centricity stream aimed to simplify the patient and site journey through service design methodologies and new technologies.
Finland's Unique Ecosystem
Bayer chose Finland for this project due to the country's strong healthcare data availability and quality, facilitated by legislation allowing secondary data use for research and innovation. Finland's robust healthcare ecosystem, comprising businesses and academia with an innovation mindset, also played a crucial role.
"One reason is our strong presence in Finland, but most of all, we saw opportunities in Finland, a unique offering in the global context," Heinrich explained.
Collaborative Innovation
The project fostered collaboration between Bayer and various Finnish companies and academic institutions. These collaborations allowed for the integration of specific service offerings, such as data transformation, analytics, and software development, into the clinical trial process.
"Bringing all parties together in a multi-stakeholder setting has shown us that there is great value in this, and it is a very productive way of doing co-innovation," Heinrich underlined.
Project Outcomes and Impact
The Future Clinical Trials project, completed in May 2024, has yielded several significant outcomes. One notable achievement is the development of an external control arm for Bayer’s clinical study using Finnish real-world data. This process has been published to benefit other companies.
"We have established better ways of finding and selecting patients for trials and optimizing our clinical protocols so that we can hopefully recruit patients and provide them with effective drugs much faster," said Heinrich.
Showcasing Finland's Opportunities
Business Finland supported the project by providing funding and facilitating the building of the project ecosystem. This support helped showcase Finland as an attractive location for new drug trials and pharmaceutical industry investments.
Outi Tuovila, Ecosystem Manager at Business Finland, stated, "We have been happy to see how Bayer has praised Finland for having an innovative environment. Our reputation as a place where healthcare data is available and can be used for secondary purposes has definitely grown."
Business Finland strategically invested 40% of the funds to complement Bayer's 60% investment, ensuring the funding was used to buy services from Finnish companies and research institutions, thereby extending the project's impact.
In 2021, Bayer received the Internationalisation Award of the President of the Republic of Finland, further highlighting the project's success and impact.
