BREAKING: Agreement with AstraZeneca highlights Saama's drug development vision

The agreement was designed to coordinate AstraZeneca’s clinical data management and medical review processes efficiently and smoothly by using Saama’s AI-enabled technology platform. The ultimate goal is to set a new industry standard for accelerating clinical development.

Lisa Moneymaker​, chief technology officer and chief product officer, at Saama, said: “Across the pharmaceutical industry, companies are recognizing the significant need and unprecedented opportunity to fundamentally change the way drug development is done by adopting new, cutting-edge technologies.

“Our vision is to accelerate drug development by leveraging the industry’s only AI-enabled technology platform to bring needed treatments to patients sooner. This agreement with AstraZeneca underscores our shared commitment to redefining drug development paradigms for the benefit of patients around the world.”

Under the agreement, AstraZeneca will integrate Saama’s platform into its data management and review systems, using Saama’s Smart Data Quality (SDQ), data hub, and patient insights solutions to achieve faster clinical database lock, more efficient data reviews, and enable smarter medical review processes.

“The breadth of our clinical portfolio at AstraZeneca is driving us to leverage cutting-edge technology to modernize data and medical review processes," said Natalie Fishburn, vice president and head of clinical operations bioPharmaceuticals R&D, at AstraZeneca.

“Saama’s platform will complement our internal efforts to automate tasks, simplify data flows and exploit the power of AI for new insights, to drive delivery of medical advances for patients.”

“Data review is a fundamental part of clinical trials that is critical to ensuring the validity of study results,” said Vivek Sharma, CEO, Saama.

“We are committed to helping companies transform their clinical development processes, by providing groundbreaking solutions that set a new benchmark for the industry.”

Saama says that the use of the industry’s most advanced technology and AI capabilities from a combination of its SDQ data hub and patient insights solutions gives study teams the power to manage the high volume and variety of clinical trial data.

The company says data is centralized and standardized from multiple sources to enable streamlined medical review processes, improve patient safety oversight, predict participant behavior, and accelerate clinical signal discovery.

This is not the first significant partnership for Saama. Back in March 2020​, it partnered with Pfizer after they decided to work together to develop and deploy an AI powered analytical tool geared towards clearing many of the obstacles faced by study data managers and monitors.

At the time, Demetris Zambas, vice president and head of data monitoring and management at Pfizer, said: “Through our strategic collaboration with Saama we’ve identified efficiencies to improve processes and experiences for our clinical research partners.”