Streamlining clinical trials in Finland’s unique environment

In the development of new drugs, clinical trials are needed to ensure the drugs are efficacious and safe to use. However, the trials have several challenges.

“Clinical trials can be quite burdensome for patients participating in them, and due to the very complex trial setups, the outcomes are not necessarily optimal,” says Bernd Heinrich, VP, Head Clinical Data Management and Monitoring at Bayer.

“Furthermore, running a clinical trial requires significant resources from the healthcare providers but also from us pharmaceutical companies.”

Clinical trials take a long time: they account for up to seven years of the around ten-year drug development process. They are also costly, as on average, the development of a prescription drug costs two billion euros.

Data-driven and patient centric approach

Bayer saw a need to address the complexity, costliness, and effort needed in clinical trials and decided to take action and find solutions to the problems using latest technologies and service design methods.

This led to setting up the Future Clinical Trials project whose mission was to develop drugs in a more data-driven and patient centric way.

Why did a multinational giant like Bayer decide to implement the project in Finland?

“That was exactly the question that came up a lot in this whole exercise. One reason is our strong presence in Finland, but most of all, we saw opportunities in Finland, a unique offering in the global context,” Heinrich points out.

One of the main reasons for bringing the project to Finland is the quantity and quality of healthcare data available here which thanks to the secondary use of data legislation can be used for scientific research, development, and innovation.

Finland also has a robust healthcare ecosystem – businesses and academia – with an innovation mindset.

“All this together made us convinced that we can solve some really big challenges in the industry with the local players.”

Building a project ecosystem

Starting in 2020, the Future Clinical Trials was divided into two work streams: data science and customer centricity.

The data science stream set out to build data science and AI capability to improve the efficiency of clinical trials, either applying existing technologies or developing new technologies with the help of real-world data and the ecosystem.

The customer centricity stream focused on simplifying the patient and site journey in future trials using service design methodologies and new technology or even developing completely new solutions.

“Beyond these objectives, we also wanted to build a network of partners around the different topics, bringing in many local players to the project and make the ecosystem a basis for continuous collaboration beyond the project.“

The workstreams were divided into concrete subprojects that Finnish companies and academia could take part in.

“We had the knowledge of clinical drug development; other parties could bring in specific service offerings, such as data transformation, analytics, or software development. Bringing all parties together in a multi-stakeholder setting has shown us that there is great value in this, and it is a very productive way of doing co-innovation,” Heinrich underlines.

The Future Clinical Trials project was completed in May 2024. It has brought new solutions and made it possible to run clinical trials more efficiently, working with real-world data and advanced algorithms to optimize them. Thanks to the project, Bayer believes it is at the forefront of developing drugs in a more data-driven fashion.

For example, an external control arm was developed for Bayer’s clinical study from Finnish real-world data, and the process was published, so other companies can benefit from it.

“We have established better ways of finding and selecting patients for trials and optimizing our clinical protocols so that we can hopefully recruit patients and provide them with effective drugs much faster.”

Showcasing Finland’s opportunities

In getting the project started, Bayer got help from Business Finland, which provided funding but also facilitated building of the project ecosystem as well as provided Bayer with opportunities to communicate about the project and get visibility to it.

“Building the ecosystem and getting all the parties in it excited was a key requirement to our success. We approached them with a bold vision, invited them to join us, and also showed that we are committed to working with them in the long term,“ says Heinrich.

For Business Finland, this was a chance to support a project that showcases Finland as an attractive location for new drug trials and the pharmaceutical industry as a whole.

“We have been happy to see how Bayer has praised Finland for having an innovative environment. Our reputation as a place where healthcare data is available and can be used for secondary purposes has definitely grown,” says Outi Tuovila, Ecosystem Manager at Business Finland.

Business Finland strategically invested 40% of the funds to complement Bayer's 60% investment, in a partnership that leverages Finnish innovation with Bayer's global reach. This collaboration is a testament to Business Finland's commitment to maximizing the impact of co-innovation projects.

Purely from the money point-of-view, Business Finland requires that its funding is used to buy services from Finnish companies and research institutions, extending the impact of the project much wider.

The project has also benefited the Finnish healthcare sector by providing businesses a chance to learn from Bayer and from each other and forge new connections that may boost their sales and open up new markets for them.

In addition, Bayer received the Internationalisation Award of the President of the Republic of Finland in 2021.

“And of course, we hope that this project and its results will attract other international pharmaceutical companies to do clinical trials here and invest in research and development in Finland.”