AstraZeneca launches a health-tech business – Evinova

AstraZeneca launched Evinova with the idea of creating a leading provider of digital health solutions to better meet the needs of healthcare professionals, regulators, and patients. With long-term backing from AstraZeneca and strategic collaborations with Parexel and Fortrea — as well as Accenture and Amazon Web Services — Evinova offers globally-scaled digital products and services to the life sciences and healthcare sector.

The new company will prioritize bringing to market established and scaled digital technology solutions already being used globally by AstraZeneca to optimize clinical trial design and delivery. This will reduce the time and cost of developing new medicines, bring care closer to home for patients and reduce the burden on health systems. Evinova will also pursue opportunities in digital remote patient monitoring and digital therapeutics with a pipeline of digital innovations in these areas. The company's targeted market includes pharma, biotech and CROs to support clinical research globally.

Evinova products and solutions

Evinova has co-created with patients the Evinova drug development suite, a suite of digital solutions that aims to bring benefits to all participants - patients, healthcare professionals and researchers. The suite includes:

Evinova unified trial solution: A global GxP-validated solution for patients, clinical trial site staff, and clinical trial sponsor staff to improve the delivery of clinical trials. It enables the delivery of traditional, hybrid and decentralized clinical trials while enhancing the patient experience. The unified trial solution supports direct collection of primary and secondary endpoint data, including novel digitally-enabled endpoints and connected medical devices and sensors at both the trial site and the patient's home. It also supports services for virtual visits, including direct-to-patient delivery of medicines, telehealth, remote patient monitoring and human biological sample tracking. Patient interaction is available through an easy-to-use, engaging patient app available in more than 40 countries and 80 languages. Site interaction is available through a single-sign-on portal.

Evinova study design and planning: Uses AI and machine learning algorithms to aid clinical development and operations teams in designing the optimal study while considering critical design variables. Teams can design their study, get automatic costs and assess operational feasibility based on actual data from that indication at a country and site level. They can view historical data and forecast future trends. The module also contains models to estimate the study's carbon footprint and impact on patient experience. Teams can accelerate decision-making through collaboration and scenario comparison capabilities.

Evinova portfolio management: Supports clinical programme and trial management, reporting and governance through transparent real-time insights and predictive analytics. It provides a complete picture of the portfolio across all phases and allows for tracking of clinical programmes and trials at global, regional, country, and site levels. It uses predictive algorithms to provide future key milestones, enabling study leaders to understand deviations from plans and supporting appropriate intervention.

On the record

"The future of medicine development can be accelerated with digital solutions," said Pascal Soriot, CEO of AstraZeneca. "We believe Evinova's combination of scientific expertise and track record in developing AI-enabled digital technologies at scale, provides a real opportunity to fundamentally improve patient care, drive healthcare transformation and reduce carbon emissions."

"We are excited to bring the portfolio of globally-scaled digital solutions developed to serve AstraZeneca's drug development pipeline to the wider life sciences community. We believe this will help propel the sector forward in digital health, as we know healthcare professionals and regulators need digital solutions that work across pharma and support patients broadly," added Cristina Duran, President of Evinova. "Coming from within the sector and with proven experience, Evinova will be uniquely placed to deliver science-based, evidence-led and human experience-driven solutions with the aim of improving patient experience and outcomes."

The context

The application of digital health technologies is seen as a solution to reduce healthcare costs while also helping to improve patient experience and outcomes​. Starting from around 6% of GDP in 2006, the combined public health and long-term care expenditure for OECD countries is projected to reach at least 9.5% in 2060.

In BRICS countries, spending ratios will also increase significantly, reaching around 10% of GDP by 2060 unless cost-containment policies are implemented. Based on 2018 healthcare spending information, McKinsey estimates that digital health interventions alone have the potential to save the US healthcare system nearly $500bn if fully adopted.

Digital health is a large (+$900bn by 2032) and growing (13.6% CAGR 2022-2032) market. The market for R&D digital health and care delivery with remote patient monitoring together makes up approximately 60% of the total digital health market. The remaining 40% consists of screening and diagnostics, wellness and disease prevention, supply of therapies and digital pharmacies.

Further, in a recent AstraZeneca article published in Nature Medicine, lead author Cristina Duran demonstrated that implementing digital health technology in clinical trials can improve the patient experience with accelerated timelines and reduced costs.