Welcome to Novartis Biome India

Feb 13, 2020

Biome is a digital lab powered by Novartis. It aims to bring together and empower technology companies and people who are passionate about disrupting healthcare through data and digital technologies.

Apart from workspace, Biome will also provide state-of-the-art IT sandbox infrastructure that will host a series of emerging technologies to promote collaboration and innovation. Biome aims to scale up, complement and enhance the progress made by startups and health innovators in India.

A digital health revolution is underway. Come, be a part of it!

HealthX Challenge

We launched the HealthX Challenge at BioAsia! We are looking for partners to work together on some of the most pressing needs of the pharma industry. If you are up for it, participate in the HealthX Challenge where we will post our problem statements, and seek your help in identifying the solutions.

Sponsored by Novartis’ Chief Digital Office, this challenge will give you the opportunity to work with us at Biome India, to translate data and digital technologies into real solutions for patients.

Check out the problem statements, and put on your thinking cap. This is the first in a series of hackathons, virtual challenges, pitch competitions and more.

Watch this space for more.......

Case study 3: Eliminating PVC in Primary packaging

Current situation:

To drive towards our ambition to be a catalyst for positive change and the leader in environmental sustainability, we want to eliminate all use of PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) in our packaging.

The opportunity:

Currently, a number of internal packaging sites switching to PVC free alternatives in the secondary and tertiary packaging. However, we still have the challenge to eliminate PVC completely from primary packaging material. Looking forward to technically effective and affordable alternatives to PVC in primary packaging that help us in eliminating PVC in primary packaging (technically and commercially) in all products.

Novartis Biome India HealthX challenge:

  • Develop sustainable alternatives to PVC in primary packaging in pharma manufacturing (technical and commercial effective)
  • Capabilities and processes need to redefine in GMP environment
  • Ease of use and implementation in our packaging lines

Case studies that have moved to the next level.

Case study 1: Digital Mouse

Current situation:

Monitoring of rodents in preclinical in-vivo phase of drug development lacks disease-specific, clinically relevant digital endpoints.

The opportunity:

Advances in vivarium technology provide an opportunity to monitor laboratory animals continuously and holistically. It would require:

  • Animal monitoring: Develop the ability to monitor animals digitally using video surveillance.
  • Novel digital endpoints: Establish preclinical digital endpoints that match clinical endpoints.

Novartis Biome India HealthX challenge:

  • Annotate images sampled from video that contains information about rodents’ body condition.
  • Develop a deep learning-based computer vision framework that leverages current clinical trial design set-up and ensembles multiple architectures to provide real-time biomarkers.
  • Establish an automated platform to visualize frame-by-frame video analysis that allows for examination, clustering and forecasting of animal health.

Case study 2: In Silico – PharmaFlow

Current situation:

The conventional approach to generic drug development requires multiple experiments that are time consuming and cost-intensive.

The opportunity:

It is imperative to use innovative data modelling/analytics-based solutions to enable scientists to draw useful insights with limited experiments, thus saving time and resources.

Develop and suggest novel proposals for employing predictive data analytics/AI/ML on our datasets (from past and ongoing generic drug development projects) to accelerate generic drug development with higher probability of success.

Novartis Biome India HealthX challenge:

  • Structure data from experiments for data science approaches.
  • Identify ML/AI, analytics-based solutions that best fit the purpose of modelling pharmaceutical development workflows.
  • Develop fit for purpose models that reduce the extent of conventional experimentation.

To participate:Write to [email protected] with these details:

  • Name of the startup company, email ID and phone number
  • Name of the founder
  • Brochure of the company
  • What are their strengths and how do they plan to make an impact on health and tech ecosystems?
  • The case study that your team would like to work on, along with a write-up on the proposed plan.
  • Please read the Web Privacy Notice before sending any information to Novartis.

Read More