Scientists working with technology in order to create something new. By: Sanjeri from Getty Images
In a very revolutionary move that’s intended to drastically change the landscape of drug development and discovery, a TechBio company that specializes in the fusion of human and artificial intelligence, has announced that they will be collaborating with AWS (Amazon Web Services). AWS, known for its “cloud infrastructure” and advanced AI tools, aims to advance and innovate in biotech and precision medicine.
Owkin plans to utilize AWS’s advanced storage capabilities, improved data security, and sophisticated computing capabilities to further help researchers and scientists work with huge amounts of data efficiently and effectively. Owkin’s has three main goals in this partnership:
1. Intended to transform and advance drug discovery, which helps speed up the method of developing new pharmaceutical drugs or therapies for consumer use.
2. Intended to reduce risks and speed up clinical trials, which basically means they want to minimize the risks to volunteers that participate in clinical trials before new drugs are sold to the public, as well as speeding up that process.
3. Develop diagnostics with AI, which involves the use of algorithms and technology to assist in detecting and diagnosing diseases and medical conditions within patients more effectively.
Owkins CEO, Thomas Clozel, shed more light on the company’s goals to analyze the already existing, extensive patient data that is available in hospitals or research centers, while still ensuring privacy and security of every patient’s medical information. With security and flexibility of AWS’s cloud, Owkins goals are within reach. In the press release, Clozel stated, “Beyond our cutting-edge technologies, our strongest asset is in the power of collective intelligence though collaboration.”
This collaboration between AWS and Owkin will propel innovation in biotech to new heights through the “high performance computing” and “machine learning tools”. By integrating Owkin’s expertise in biotech research with AWS’s secure and flexible cloud infrastructure, the partnership aims to develop advanced AI applications, and build new foundation models that are important for discovering new drugs; all this will be supported and stored into the cloud’s very expansive “petabyte” storage. The general manager of Healthcare and Life Sciences at AWS, Dan Sheeran, also commented on Owkin’s partnership in the press release, “We are excited to support Owkin in their journey to lower costs and discover and develop better, more targeted treatments faster.”
Amazon SageMaker will also have a very crucial role in this partnership. Owkin will utilize SageMaker to build, train and deploy machine learning models more effectively. Owkin aims to deploy its portfolio of AI solutions all across research partners, pathology labs, and biopharma, which ultimately helps with patient health outcomes. The collaboration plans to create a huge shift by utilizing already existing, advanced AI technology to even better address healthcare challenges many people face.
With experts from both AWS’s Healthcare and Life Sciences, and Owkin collaborating on one goal, their partnership’s end goal is to address the detrimental challenges faced in precision medicine. By using their advanced technology and expertise in each respective subject, Owkin and AWS aims to create innovative solutions for global healthcare challenges, which eventually means every patient will receive the right treatment for whatever ails them.
