IBM touts cloud computing's ability to cut trial costs

IBM estimates that eight to 12 percent of the cost of clinical trials is spawned by investigators' need to move data around--with various trial sites, for example, comparing the data that they are creating. And IBM sees that cost as an enormous opportunity for its new cloud-computing project. Limiting duplication of data--while handling the information in a HIPAA-compliant fashion--would have a big impact on trial budgets, says Erich Clementi, the company's VP of strategy and general manager of enterprise initiatives.

Clementi says the IBM cloud should also be able to improve on the analytics involved in analyzing the data. And the tech giant is also out to facilitate the growing level of collaboration going on in the drug discovery world, with various developers all involved in the same project.

"Our focus on enterprise forces us to deal with the infrastructures people have, not the ones we wish they had," said Clementi at GigaOM's structure conference in San Francisco.

- here's a link to the story and the GigaOM presentation

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