Novo Nordisk wins Bio-IT World 2019 Innovative Practices Award

Novo Nordisk uses Linguamatics NLP in groundbreaking project to mine real world data insights

Novo Nordisk has received one of the three Bio-IT World Innovative Practices Awards for their workflow to integrate NLP to generate actionable insights from real world data, during the Bio-IT World Conference and Exposition 2019 in Boston. Linguamatics, the leading Natural Language Processing (NLP) solution provider, is the Novo Nordisk NLP technology partner. Linguamatics and Novo Nordisk were among the 9 projects and 15 organizations selected as finalists for this prestigious award.

Bio-IT World’s Innovative Practices Award recognizes partnerships and projects pushing the life science industry forward, by highlighting examples of how technology innovations and strategic initiatives can be powerful forces for change. After winning Bio-IT World’s Best of Show Judges’ Prize in 2018 with iScite 2.0, the Linguamatics team is extremely proud of this new accomplishment.

Novo Nordisk is a global healthcare company with more than 90 years of innovation and leadership in diabetes care. This heritage has given them experience and capabilities that also enable them to help people defeat other serious chronic conditions: diabetes, haemophilia, growth disorders and obesity.

In their project with Linguamatics, Novo Nordisk wanted to extract more value from the real-world data (RWD) being collected about the use of its products, so that commercial teams could better understand what patients and healthcare professionals were saying, and take appropriate action. Novo Nordisk used Linguamatics NLP solution to analyze three key RWD sources and extract well-structured data. The resulting information was then presented to the business users via Tableau-based self-serve dashboards, for exploration and insight generation. In addition, Novo Nordisk migrated the Linguamatics platform and Tableau to its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud-based global big data and analytics platform. This now provides business users and product teams with enhanced access to real world data around Novo Nordisk products for better derivation of actionable insights.

By bringing together these data sources, Novo Nordisk have reduced manual work by FTEs (allowing them to focus on actual analysis and communication of trends), reduced vendor spend, automated and standardised the process of generating insights, and significantly expanded access to these insights across a global team. The system has broadened how and where insights are communicated, and ties together medical and patient insights collected through multiple and previously siloed channels. This innovative approach to generating insights from real world data, using a combination of best-of-breed technologies, is what the Bio-IT World judges recognised.

Being able to respond rapidly to trends seen in clinical practice, concerns from patients or HCPs, or indications of competitor product advantage, enables Novo Nordisk to stay at the forefront of diabetes care globally.

So proud of my team and our collaboration with our IT colleagues at Novo Nordisk! Thank you Linguamatics for being wonderful and supportive technology partners!
- Thierry Breyette, Associate Director, Medical Information & Analytics, Clinical Development, Medical & Regulatory Affairs at Novo Nordisk