UPDATE
Pfizer Finland taps biobank network for trials
Pfizer Finland – a subsidiary of US-headquartered Pfizer Inc. – will use the Bcrquest platform to analyse anonymised data from healthcare organisations, including the Turku University Hospital in southwest Finland, to study patients with an abnormal heart rhythm (atrial fibrillation).
A BC Platforms spokesperson told us the project is in Phase I, and focuses on Finnish data “and potentially Estonian data.”
“Both parties have targets to work on a global scale,” the spokesperson added.
Pfizer Finland's country medical director Jaakko Parkkinen told us the firm will use the data to understand healthcare resource utilization in patients suffering from atrial fibrillation (AF).
"At the same time we are piloting the utilization of advanced data analytics and hospital-based data lakes in generation of deep phenotypic patient data which could be combined with genomic data,” he added.
Bcrquest
Bcrquest is a global biobank network that combines data assets to respond to queries regarding genomic and clinical data.
According to the spokesperson, the BCRQUEST platform can “speed up trial design and reduce costly corrective measures by sending formalised eligibility criteria across distributed hospital networks.”
The platform can also help source “estimates on matching patients within minutes, based on real-time data,” we were told.
Researchers from pharmaceutical companies, as well as public entities, can use the network to find the data and subjects needed to perform their research in a ‘Google’ like manner, we were told.
Microsoft is supplying the infrastructure to index and access the platform’s information via its Azure cloud platform.
Not the first ‘top ten’
A BC spokesperson told us this agreement is not its first ‘top ten’ pharma deal, referencing last month’s agreement with Amgen Finland.
BC will soon be announcing similar agreements, we were told.
The firm said it aims offer data and samples from more than five million subjects from a global network of biobanks by 2020.
