Big Data in Personalized Medicine – the SAP approach

In a recent blogpost on Forbes I reported on major market trends for Personalized Medicine. I would now like to provide more insights into SAP’s answers to these customer needs.

One of the strongest market needs is to make sense out of the flood of data. As patients are taking control of their healthcare experience and demanding changes to how healthcare and life science products and services are developed, produced, delivered, and priced, physicians and researchers are challenged to handle more information and to provide better (automated) diagnosis and treatment options.

Two SAP customers can be highlighted in this regard:

• The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) is developing the system CancerLinQ, intended to support their 35000 oncologists to make sense  of patient data. CancerLinQ is designed to easily create smart reports for special populations like the elderly, specific genomic types, patients under age 30, and those in poor health. Its benefits are summarized in today’s blogpost American Society of Clinical Oncology and SAP to improve Cancer Treatment.
• The National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) Heidelberg employs SAP Medical Research Insights, as shown in this video and on this website.

Researchers in pharma and in other other research institutes need to make sense of big data as well; be it from genomics, or from devices. A few examples what this looks like:

• Stopping Diabetes in its tracks with Connected Care – Roche and SAP
• Stanford School of Medicine Genomic Research
• Fast track to food security: plant genomics article
• Digitizing Cervix Cancer Screening in Kenya
• Connected care transforms prenatal care – SAP and abcmedien partnership

Ultimately, the objective is better prevention, diagnosis, treatment – and care. SAP is uniquely positioned to help advance Personalized Medicine. Its sophisticated platforms and advanced analytic solutions can unlock the value of data – from genomes to electronic medical records to clinical trials. As the examples above show, integration, real-time analytics, and reporting of biomedical data, can provide key insights.

I also previously reported on another key trend: the need for secure data from diverse sources. This can help life science professionals, researchers, doctors, and patients make consistent, high-quality decisions, while securing the privacy of patient confidential data. Data privacy is a challenge, as illustrated by prediction #5 of the IDC top 10 predictions for healthcare and IT.

How can SAP help? First, SAP provides full transparency and gives users complete control over how the data is used, processed, and reported. Second, SAP can create the right security concept with the customer, as already illustrated by the ASCO and NCT examples above. Here some more examples that show why it is beneficial to chose an enterprise-proof platform to ensure that data remains private:

• Protect your data – and your business – with SAP and its security solutions
• SAP: Enabling the “Human Firewall” – SAP case study
• Software Security in a Digital World – Blogpost by Rob Enslin

Industry examples:

• Connected Care Transforms Prenatal Care
• A Safer World with the Powerful Force of Technology – an example from defense and security
• Banking: another industry where data security and privacy are critical – example

SAP focuses on ensuring that all major international data security and privacy standards are met where needed, and SAP can assist the customer to develop the right security and privacy concept.

• A Culture of Privacy for over 40 years
• Implement best privacy/security business practices – Physical, Administrative and Technical compliance
• Executive directives from the SAP Board of Directors

Compliant Solutions: Adherence to European Union data privacy directives with additional controls provided by German authorities. Compliance with specific regulations, including HIPAA, GLBA, FERC5, FERPA, PCIDSS. Technical compliance, including OSI, ISO9xxx and NIST – and more.

SAP solutions for Personalized Medicine help the world run better and improve people’s lives. More exciting news to follow – stay tuned.