SAP Innovation Award 2021 & why personalized medicine isn't a pie in the sky

[LeonievB]

Health is a very valuable thing. This has become even more evident throughout the last year as the spread of the covid-19 virus has brought the world to a standstill and now as before affects our daily lives massively. But despite all the restrictions and deprivations we have to live with - isn't it also fascinating how much progress we've made in healthcare and research during this one year since the pandemic hit?

Development of treatments

Several vaccines have been developed by the medical research institutes to fight the virus - all of them with a very high effectiveness and good results in clinical trials. In Europe/Germany, three of them have already passed the high requirements of the permanent vaccination commission and every day thousands of people get vaccinated. The fourth vaccine is already just around the corner and will bring further relief soon. All this happened just within one year.

Advancement through technology

This immense progress would not have been possible without the latest technology. High performance computing, intelligent algorithms, AI and other intelligent technology paved the way to this great success and it won't stop there.

While right now the focus is on the fight against Covid-19 obviously, many of the research outcomes have significant impact on the development of other treatments, e.g. for cancer therapies. Especially for cancer treatments, a one-fits-all approach doesn't work but an individual therapy is required. So what impact can technology have on the development of personalized medicine?

Blockchain for Healthcare

Advanced, highly personalized cell therapies require a specialized manufacturing process. One challenge is to assure the chain of identity and custody due to the high degree of process distribution and the orchestration of many external parties, resulting in very high treatment costs today.

Camelot ITLab, Hypertrust Patient Data Care and Dell Technologies developed and conducted a joint PoC at one of the top 5 global pharma companies for its personalized cancer vaccine in clinical trials. The implemented system integrates a specialized contract manufacturer in collaboration with a logistics services provider, an IT services provider and treatment facilities. The solution is based on the blockchain technology - which is key to achieve an immutable audit trail.

The PoC has shown: personalized medicine is not a pie in the sky. Actually, it's quite real. The solution and the technology basis are there. And the next customer is already in a project phase right now.

SAP Innovation Award 2021

Together with with juliahauri1 from our partner Camelot ITLab we submitted this great story for the SAP Innovation Award 2021. If you want to learn more, please visit the entry page and review the pitch deck.

Feel free to reach out if you're interested and want to hear more about the details or have a look at the related whitepaper and webinar (German language).

At Dell Technologies, we made it our purpose to create technologies that drive human progress. We're serious about that!

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