Enhancing data sharing and analysis for medical research

Orion develops, manufactures and markets human and veterinary pharmaceuticals and active pharmaceutical ingredients. The company is continuously developing new drugs and treatment methods for central nervous system (CNS) disorders, oncology and respiratory diseases. Its customers are mainly healthcare service providers and professionals such as veterinarians, pharmacies, hospitals, healthcare centers, clinics and laboratories.

As the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates, the efficient production of pharmaceuticals plays a vital role in protecting life. Even in such demanding times, the pharmaceutical sector is still controlled by strict regulations that covers the safety and availability of drugs, and the reliability of the industry. As a leading developer of pharmaceuticals, Orion’s mission is to meet or exceed these requirements while improving the well-being and health of its customers.

The company wanted to deploy a cloud-based Data Science Workspace that would enable it to automate analysis, scaling to cope with complex projects and providing an intelligent platform to develop new products.

“Our existing on-premise data center services were unsuitable for this new Data Science Workspace initiative,” explains Outi Anttila, Head of Core Services, Orion Corporation. “We evaluated the market and decided Microsoft Azure would be the ideal cloud platform, however, we needed an application development and managed cloud service partner to help with our project.” Orion selected Fujitsu as its managed cloud service partner when Bitfactor was selected for application development vendor.

Orion had already engaged Fujitsu to provide managed IT infrastructure services, including responsibility for managing Orion’s desktop, communication and capacity services, delivery of Microsoft Office 365, security, network and end-user devices. This made it the natural choice for the ambitious workspace project, making Fujitsu a single point of contact for a hybrid IT environment, with robust delivery and service management covering both worlds.

Orion, Fujitsu and Bitfactor together used Scrum, an agile process framework for managing complex knowledge work, to build the new infrastructure within Azure. This provides a scalable R&D sandpit for the exploration of real-world use cases. The development team used modern development tools such as Azure DevOps, Jira, Confluence, Terraform and GitHub.

“Fujitsu worked tirelessly to create a robust Azure environment to host the Data Science Workspace, developed by a local Finnish partner, Bitfactor. Given the sensitive and confidential nature of much of the data, security was a paramount concern; Fujitsu was able to incorporate the existing on-premise multi-factor authentication and firewalls into the cloud solution to minimize risk, ensure data privacy and protect corporate IP,” continues Anttila.

The Data Science Workspace has the potential to speed up time to market for new products. It offers an integrated, powerful and user-friendly solution for the purpose.

It has streamlined repetitive manual work that previously was carried out with non-integrated tools. Orion only pays for what it uses, with no upfront investment and it can scale up with unlimited capacity.

“Fujitsu has delivered a dedicated and reliable Azure infrastructure for Data Science Workspace with better analytics of data and information, enabling an easier and more efficient collaboration,” concludes Anttila.