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Early-Stage Life Sciences

What Early-Stage Life Sciences Startups Need to Know About IT for Robust Growth

Early-Stage Life Sciences

The life sciences industry is booming, and with that growth comes the need for IT that can keep up. Fueling this upsurge are venture capitalists and other early-stage investors pouring capital into funding innovation in cities like Boston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, the South Florida area, the San Francisco Bay area, and more.

Early-stage life sciences companies are faced with specific challenges as they scale from startup to IPO. From biotech and biopharma to health tech and clinical research companies—and everything in between—all face similar growing pains when it comes to IT. This blog post explores some of these challenges and what you should expect as your company grows.

Technology is an Innovator in Life Sciences

Life science is an industry in which digital disruption has upended how IT intersects with strategy and operations. IT has morphed from a business cost center into a significant driver of innovation and success. The technology opportunities presented by advances in data analytics, AI and machine learning, hyper-automation, and quantum computing represent a shift towards IT as an integral component in business growth.

Additionally, healthcare and life sciences trends are driving the need for technology advancements, including a shift towards a customer-centric commercial model, new types of collaborations, and improvements to the clinical research development and review process.

While technology innovation presents new opportunities, that does not eliminate the back-end demand for IT functionality. For example, even the most innovative biopharma startup needs IT infrastructure to power their everyday business operations like email, cloud storage, employee onboarding, and more.

The IT Challenge for Early-Stage Life Science Companies

The challenge for series A and seed-funded life science firms is finding the right balance between innovation, business operations, and budgetary restraints.

While in this stage of development, many early-stage companies may want to only focus on their current IT needs; nevertheless, it is critical to plan for future growth. Worries like compliance requirements and intellectual property security may seem like distant concerns, but it is ideal to take a birds-eye-view approach and not just keep an eye on the path directly ahead. Lacking the knowledge about a coming fork in the road, your company could find itself on a very real dead-end requiring disruptive and costly changes to core business systems. And with the growth of the industry and the trend of an accelerated development cycle, you could find yourself needing to address increased IT investment sooner than expected.

Positioning IT for Growth

In the early stages of business development, many life science startups have been too busy focusing on funding to think about IT beyond their initial business plan. However, with funding secured, it is crucial that you begin building the foundation of your IT infrastructure.

At this point, most startups in the life sciences space choose to outsource some or all IT functionalities. However, the risk here is selecting the wrong IT partner who can’t scale with you, recommends the wrong core systems, provides low-quality support, or just doesn’t understand the unique needs of your specific industry within the life sciences sector. Therefore, it is critical that you conduct a due diligence process to ensure future success.

Related Content → IT Vendor Due Diligence Checklist for Life Sciences.

What Are the IT Requirements for a Life Science Startup?

Before beginning the due diligence process, it is critical to understand and evaluate your current IT requirements while considering how to power innovation and develop operational scalability and flexibility. Whether an early-stage medical devices manufacturer, a digital health company, one of the many biotech incubators, or other life sciences startup, IT setup generally includes the following fundamentals:

  • Core system infrastructure consisting of email services, file storage, productivity, collaboration tools, and more.
  • A reliable means of seamlessly onboarding a steady flow of new employees.
  • Security implementation including antivirus and antimalware, multifactor authentication, master data management, Office Firewall, and more.
  • Cloud storage that can efficiently and quickly scale to support the changing needs as your need for data grows.
  • Above all, the greatest need is for a trusted strategic IT advisor with robust experience within the life sciences domain to help plan for growth.

To dive deeper, download our data sheet → What Early-Stage Life Sciences Startups Need to Know About IT.

An Experienced Partner

Coretelligent has extensive experience working with startups in the life sciences industry. We currently support over seventy-five life sciences firms in a variety of fields around the country. Our top priority is understanding your firm’s business strategy and providing solutions to help you meet your goals. We have experience scaling IT for a startup in the earliest stages through to a late-stage life sciences company.

As an industry leader, Coretelligent can help you meet all the IT requirements of your developing biotechnology, biopharmaceutical, health technology, or other life sciences firm. We guide clients throughout their journey towards success with our full suite of managed and co-managed IT solutions, including cloud services, cybersecurity, support, strategic services, and more. Reach out to learn more.

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Life Sciences Industry Innovation is Where Business & Technology Intersect

IT Roadmap for Life Sciences Industry from Startup to IPO

Life Sciences Industry Innovation is Where Business & Technology IntersectThe life sciences industry is experiencing a period of rapid growth. Not only does the sector produce life-saving and life-enhancing treatments, but it is fueling investment across the globe. For example, 78 startups went public in 2020 in the biotech sphere, representing a 77% increase from the previous year. Additionally, the first half of 2021 saw already seen 62 biopharma companies progress to IPO status. With the increased demand for innovative drugs, medical devices, and other therapies in the wake of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine development, various trends within the industry (like changes to clinical trials), and increased levels of investment, 2022 is shaping up to be a big year for the sector.

Innovation is the driver of the current expansion within the life sciences market. However, the key to maximizing this ROI, or Return on Innovation, requires that business and technology synchronize. This imperative calls for a carefully planned IT roadmap that enables companies to achieve a competitive advantage and improve business outcomes throughout the development, startup, growth, and expansion stages.

To help executives better understand the timeline, Coretelligent has developed a chart outlining the technology and business needs of the life sciences ecosystem throughout their life cycle. Download our datasheet Innovation is Where Business & Technology Intersect outlining how to plan your company’s IT strategy as you move through funding phases.

To dive deeper, download our data sheet → Innovation is Where Business & Technology Intersect.

In an earlier post, we shared some of the IT challenges faced by early-stage life sciences organizations. With this post, let’s take a deeper look at later-stage companies and what their IT strategy should be focused on as they scale.

What are the main IT priorities of life science firms as they move into their growth and expansion stages?

 

→ Employ technology for data management

As biotech, biopharma, and other life science enterprises grow, managing data increases in scale and complexity. As a result, cloud-based solutions and SaaS applications must align to ensure that enterprise data is available, usable, consistent, reliable, and secure. Employing the right technology solutions, including cloud-based services, backup and recovery, and others that store, manage, and protect data are critical at this stage.

→ Leverage technology to drive innovation

Not only has innovation come to the life sciences space, but it’s also bringing emerging technological trends with it. Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotic Process Automation (RBA), Machine Learning (ML), Cloud/Big Data, and other developing technologies are evolving as disrupters to the sector. Successful life science companies will envision how to capitalize on these tools.

→ Optimize technology to grow operations

Even as innovative technology trends shift the landscape, IT becomes more integral to the core business operations as companies scale. While some may be using a managed IT model, most companies likely employ co-managed solutions during the later stages. A co-managed service provider empowers internal IT staff to drive technology delivery at scale and focus on strategic priorities. A technology partner can lighten the load by fulfilling tech support, plug critical skill gaps, and complement in-house capabilities with specialized technology services.

→ Utilize technology to ensure security and compliance

As a life science firm grows, compliance requirements increase in size and scope. At the same time, these companies have become more attractive targets for cybercriminals. As a result, life science firms must prioritize implementing robust cybersecurity tools and compliance processes to keep pace with evolving regulations while protecting sensitive data from bad actors.

Related Content → GxP and FDA 21 CFR Part 11 Compliance with Egnyte for Life Sciences.

Developing IT Growth Strategy for the Life Sciences Industry

The life sciences industry is booming, and the future looks even brighter. But the key to success involves more than just innovation—effective growth also depends on how well your life sciences company can leverage IT capabilities throughout your life cycle. In building out an effective IT strategy for startups, begin by understanding where your organization stands today, followed by preparing for those IT areas that will require digital transformation. Furthermore, leveraging new technologies like AI, RPA, ML, and Big Data, can help accelerate your progress and open up new opportunities in the journey towards achieving your goals.

To sum up, you need to understand what’s possible before embarking on any journey. By taking stock of current practices, planning ahead, prioritizing initiatives based on pain points, incorporating new technologies, and teaming up with a technology partner, you’ll be well-positioned to meet future growth. Coretelligent is an industry leader with extensive experience in the life sciences sector. To learn more about how Coretelligent can help your company successfully scale so that growth doesn’t stifle innovation, talk to one of our technology experts today.

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