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How data is driving the next generation of medicine AstraZeneca has been a global leader in pharmaceutical research and development for decades. Today, the company's scientists and clinicians are using AI to help redefine medical science in the quest for new and better ways to discover, test, and accelerate potential medicines. branded content by BRINGING NEW MEDICINES to today's market can be…complex and complicated. In the biopharmaceutical industry, it can take up to 15 years to go from an idea for a drug to a medicine that's approved for patients—a process that requires (and produces) a staggering amount of data. Even for a global biopharmaceutical leader such as AstraZeneca, research and development have traditionally been lengthy endeavors plagued by arduously manual processes. And because of recent advances in understanding the human genome and how it intersects with disease biology, the company faces an influx of data as it looks to identify new drug targets and develop next-generation therapeutics. Back in 2019, Anna Berg Åsberg, Global Vice President of R&D IT, began conversations with R&D leaders about where her department could apply technology to automate and augment R&D processes as well as help make the best decisions on which research projects to advance through the pipeline. "The hypothesis was, if we can automate routine tasks, that would make a massive difference," Åsberg said. "That's where we teamed up with our internal data science, analytics, and artificial intelligence experts and started to build solutions on AWS." Amazon Web Services (AWS) and AstraZeneca were already well-acquainted. An industry-