March 12, 2007
Oracle Corporation
Mychelle Mowrey
Vice President for Global Health Industries
How has your company adapted and responded to the changing economic climate in the past five years when so many others companies did not?
Oracle Corporation has a strong emphasis in healthcare and life sciences because technology is capable of significantly transforming these industries. Faced with the healthcare demands of an aging population, the need for quality healthcare delivery and services has never been greater. Oracle is working with industry-leading pharmaceutical, medical, and research institutions to enable this transformation, leveraging Oracle’s expertise in developing healthcare and life sciences software technology and applications. While other industries have accepted automation more readily and standardized on software products, life sciences has progressed more slowly and until recently did not need to focus on the cost savings from enterprise business applications and integrated software for clinical and medical device research. Clinical automation has the advantage of removing time-consuming steps in the research process, providing more accurate and complete data. Furthermore, it cuts the costs of compliance by incorporating regulations into trail design and management.
What is your vision for the future role of IT in the life sciences market over the next several years?
There will be more rapid convergence of information from research to care delivery. Translational medicine will become critically important as the move to personalized, predictable, and preventative medicine begins to revolutionize the healthcare industry. Information technology is fundamental to the promise of more cost effective, safe and efficient drug trials, targeted therapies and molecular diagnostics. Databases regarding current clinical information about specific patients/cohorts as well as global databases regarding large groups of cohorts will be critical to meet the needs of patients with chronic disease, accelerating drug discovery, identifying bio-terrorism and pandemics, and controlling escalating healthcare delivery costs.
What products and services does your company deliver to the life sciences industry and what special capabilities do you offer to the life sciences market?
Oracle offers solutions that impact all aspects of the life sciences value chain, including drug discovery, clinical development, manufacturing, and commercialization. Oracle’s life sciences business solutions manage innovation, reduce regulatory risk, and enhance growth — strategic initiatives that are central to business success. Oracle accomplishes this through the depth and breath of our life science-centric applications, database technology and information architecture.
Partnerships are an effective way to track life science advances and ensure that your company delivers timely products and services. Which life sciences companies or technology organizations have you partnered with or invested in and why?
Oracle partners with numerous life sciences companies and systems integrators to advance the development of its life sciences products as well as its enterprise business applications. For example, the recent release of the Life Sciences Data Hub was developed in partnership with Boerhinger Ingelheim and IBM, and Oracle’s Clinical Trail Management System was influenced through a partnership with Accenture. Oracle’s software technology is relied upon by major developers of scientific informatics software and manufactures of advanced automated laboratory equipment, to which Oracle’s commitment continues. We are currently one of four pilots for the Nationwide Health Information Network supported by HHS in which we are working with Orion, Initiate, and Accenture to prove that our technology is capable of transferring meaningful data between remote and disparate systems across regional boundaries.
What are your most exciting products and initiatives in development, and how will they improve life science research?
Oracle continues to enhance all its life science-specific products working through partners and with customers. One of the most exciting areas we are now focusing on is the ability to collect, analyze and synthesize large volumes of data for translational medical research. Oracle’s Database 10g , with its inherent bioinformatics capability, when combined with Oracle Healthcare Transaction Base will have the ability to aggregate clinical healthcare and life science research data that will significantly impact the clinical drivers the industry is facing. In addition, Oracle’s RDF Data Model — a feature of Oracle Spatial 10g, an option to Oracle Database 10g — is helping life sciences organizations harness the emerging power of the Semantic Web to evaluate multiple data sources in parallel in order to identify candidates with the best potential, as well as new patterns that lead to spontaneous breakthroughs.
Where do you see your company in five years?
Oracle will continue to invest in life sciences and will be viewed by our customers and partners as providing products and services that continue to help innovate, lower costs, enhance productivity and drive the industry forward. Through our technology and business applications we hope to positively impact an industry that is rapidly changing and critical to the success of our planet.