PrecisionLife: pushing the boundaries of medical data analysis and patents licensing with Ideals 

Overview

In early 2021, PrecisionLife, a leading techbio company identifying better treatment options for patients with unmet medical needs, planned a major expansion and required technology that would let them communicate information about patent applications and scientific research while maintaining absolute control over sensitive data.

“Cybersecurity is a common challenge for the biopharma industry, but it’s a priority for us, working with patient data and adhering to the highest ISO27001 and ISO27701 data security and privacy standards”, explained Rowan Gardner, Chief Business and Investment Officer at PrecisionLife.

To support the company’s growth and its mission of pioneering medical research, PrecisionLife chose Ideals following a comprehensive selection process, leveraging the stringent security, user-friendliness, and flexibility of its VDR: “We have every confidence that Ideals will enable us to do our work wherever it takes us.”

The context

Established in 2013, PrecisionLife leads the world in the use of a proprietary analytical technology to perform detailed disease biology analysis in highly complex chronic diseases.

In 2019, the company made a strategic decision to launch an early-stage partnering model, rebranding in the process to exploit its data analytics platform and expand its portfolio of validated assets. 

Now, PrecisionLife has successfully developed one of the largest drug discovery pipelines of precision-targeted therapies for unmet medical need, earning a reputation within international pharma circles for its unique ability to achieve high resolution patient stratification, driving precision medicine beyond rare disease and cancer into common diseases that account for over 80% of healthcare spending. 

Key challenges

Mark Strivens, PrecisionLife’s CTO, looking for a reliable and secure tool to support their expanding business, knew that other file/data transfer solutions would not be an adequate solution.

To meet their needs, they required a platform that:

• Provided secure storage for patient data and proprietary insights
• Ensured confidential communication with partner pharma companies worldwide
• Allowed different teams to run projects simultaneously

Mark led the search and evaluated several providers but chose Ideals because of its bank-grade security and intuitive interface. “You don’t have to be an expert,” he comments. “Ideals is extremely easy to use, not just for me, but for everyone in the company.” 

Solution

Throughout their projects, the team was impressed with the range of security features, and they also welcomed the friendly customer care. Rowan commented, “Ideals is very easy to talk to, that’s attractive!” 

The company decided to make the platform and service a core part of its operations, relying on it to support various critical tasks, including:

• Patent filings
• Collaborative programs
• Due diligence
• Licensing and partnering deals
• Fundraising

With Ideals, PrecisionLife had complete confidence in their ability to collaborate securely with their partners, as they could:

• Set read-only access for watermarked documents
• Allow their partners to download files immediately where appropriate
• Set up multiple groups with finely differentiated access levels
• Use the desktop app to upload documents automatically

The future

In the last year, PrecisionLife has entered into a series of commercial drug discovery partnerships with small, mid-size, and top-five biopharma companies, proof of PrecisionLife’s unique ability to find deep and valuable insights in patient data for some of the most complex and challenging diseases.

In May 2023, they announced a strategic R&D collaboration with major not-for-profit biomedical organization LifeArc to help achieve their goal of making Motor Neuron Disease (MND) — also known as ALS/Lou Gehrig’s disease — treatable by 2030.

Each new project reaffirms PrecisionLife’s faith in Ideals as an extremely secure tool for expansion and innovation in the highly competitive and rapidly evolving biopharma industry. 

Rowan says, “every time we’ve had a new need, we’ve been entirely able to service it with Ideals.”