2019 Veeva R&D Summit: Speeding Drug Development with Unified and Connected Applications

“We want to do our part to help the life sciences industry get together to serve our shared customers, the patients, better – we want to help you in your journey to improve and extend human life,” said Peter Gassner, CEO and founder of Veeva in his opening keynote at the 2019 Veeva R&D Summit in Philadelphia.

Founder and CEO Peter Gassner discussing how Veeva is partnering with life sciences companies to speed drug development

That was the spirit of the event, where more than 1,700 life sciences professionals and industry experts gathered to discuss innovation in drug development and the role of technology in delivering treatments to patients faster.

At the action packed, three-day event, general manager for Veeva Vault CDMS, Henry Levy, talked about Veeva’s journey over the last seven years, from the first R&D Summit in 2014 with 300 attendees to today, where the R&D Summit is the premier industry event for research and development in life sciences.

The life sciences industry is experiencing unprecedented innovation, especially in areas such as regenerative sciences, gene editing, and immunoncology. Keynote speakers Joe Jimenez, former CEO of Novartis and Paul Sehkri, CEO of eGenesis talked about how improved access to information and advanced analytics are enabling scientists to target diseases like they’ve never been able to before. As the science becomes more complex, it also presents obstacles which increase cost and time. These obstacles can include challenges with managing increase in information or changes in systems and processes.

Joe Jimenez, former CEO of Novartis and Paul Sehkri, CEO of eGenesis discussing the impact of breakthrough innovations in life sciences

Veeva is empowering life sciences companies with technology to navigate this industry change by increasing business agility, speeding time-to-market, and better meeting regulatory requirements. In the last seven years, Veeva has built an integrated suite of applications to get treatments to patients faster. Veeva Development Cloud now includes 18 unified and connected applications that help life sciences companies speed drug development in clinical data management, clinical operations, quality, regulatory, and drug safety.

General manager for Veeva Vault CDMS, Henry Levy, showcasing Veeva Development Cloud

There were many customer stories at the summit that demonstrated the power Veeva Development Cloud applications. The summit featured a range of industry experts who talked about implementing change in their organizations and shared best practices for digital transformation:

• Vikas Gulati, executive director of clinical data management and metrics at Vertex, and Michelle Harrison, director of clinical data management at Vertex, spoke about agile design practices that enabled them to reduce study build times by up to 50%
• Doug Schantz, executive director of development operations at AstraZeneca, presented their use of a unified clinical trial platform to simplify and speed how clinical trials are conducted
• Melanie Lougheed, director of process and learning management at PRA Health Sciences, and Dana Baird, manager of process and learning management at PRA Health Sciences, discussed improvement of quality management experience and gaining greater alignment with clients by replacing multiple legacy systems with a unified solution
• Stephen Cook, regulatory processes and systems program lead at GSK, explained their multi-year transformation journey to unify regulatory processes to seamlessly integrate teams in different countries

We’re proud to partner with customers to help them on their important mission of getting treatments to patients faster. Every year, we recognize Veeva Heroes for their contribution to driving innovation and transformation in life sciences.

At this year’s event, we honoured seven Veeva Heroes from Janssen, Gilead Sciences, Eli Lilly and Company, Melinta Therapeutics, and Vertex Pharmaceutical, for making a significant impact in clinical, regulatory, and quality operations within their organization and across the life sciences industry.

Veeva continues innovation for Veeva Vault, to drive greater efficiency and effectiveness with speed and quality in drug development. The summit showcased new solutions in Veeva Vault, including Veeva Vault Safety.AI, an artificial intelligence application for pharmacovigilance that automates case intake, and Veeva SiteVault Free, a free eRegulatory application built specifically for clinical research sites to speed study activation and improve investigator site file management. Veeva also announced growing momentum for Veeva Vault CDMS amongst emerging biopharma and CROs to build studies faster and improve efficiency across clinical teams.

As Veeva moves forward, we remain committed to continuously innovating and partnering with the life sciences industry to get treatments to patients faster. We will continue to invest in creating purpose-built unified and connected suites of applications in clinical data management, clinical operations, quality, regulatory, and drug safety. Pre-register now to attend the 2020 Veeva R&D Summit on October 12-14 in Boston.