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Lifebit, Boehringer Ingelheim Collaborate on Data, Analytics for Drug Discovery

NEW YORK – Lifebit Biotech and Boehringer Ingelheim said Tuesday that they will collaborate on data and analytics to improve drug discovery and other research activities.

London-based Lifebit will support Boehringer in building a scalable bioinformatics platform to help the pharmaceutical company standardize data sources and types, curate information, and identify data and services that could be moved to the cloud. The platform, to be built in the Lifebit CloudOS environment, will be federated to give Boehringer access to data from third-party biobanks without having to move data around.

This new collaboration builds on a year-old relationship, in which Boehringer agreed to use Lifebit's Real artificial intelligence-based analytics technology to improve detection and surveillance of infectious diseases including COVID-19.

"We are thrilled to contribute to Boehringer Ingelheim's vision of harnessing the power of external biobanks and large-scale clinicogenomic data to transform R&D," Lifebit CEO Maria Chatzou Dunford said in a statement.

"Partnering with Lifebit … is so critical as data and digital technologies can feed into meaningful scientific exploration, accelerate patient benefits, and ultimately lead to improved health," added Markus Schümmelfeder, Boehringer's head of IT.

Lifebit is in the midst of validating and promoting its federated data strategy in CloudOS with several partners in the UK, including the British government.

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