Could you brief us in detail about Saama?

Saama is the #1 AI-driven Intelligent Clinical Cloud company, enabling the life sciences industry to conduct faster and safer clinical development and regulatory programs. Today, Over 50 biotech companies use Saama’s award-winning, AI-powered Life Science Analytics Cloud (LSAC) platform on more than 1,500 studies, including many of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies. LSAC’s rich applications facilitate an unprecedented, authoritative oversight of comprehensive clinical research data, enabling companies to file New Drug Applications (NDAs) more efficiently and bring drugs to market faster.

What makes Saama’s solutions exceptional as compared to the other providers in the industry? Also, brief us about the solutions offered by Saama.

Saama is the leader of the current evolution from e-clinical to ClinTech, the exciting new category of purpose-built, artificial intelligence (AI)-based clinical insights and automation platforms that is changing the face of clinical development. Life science companies are tossing the old clinical development handbook out the window as they reimagine the drug development paradigm by disrupting and improving the clinical operations continuum with AI. Sustainable transformation for drug development can be realized to achieve scale, acceleration, and repeatability across therapeutic areas. Though the “D” may still be positioned behind the “R” in the phrase “R&D,” it has finally caught up. The result: delivering safe and effective drugs to patients faster than ever before without impacting the quality.

Why has Saama’s LSAC become the industry standard for life science companies?

Samma is empowering every persona in the clinical program with better intuitive intelligence for elevated therapeutic efficacy and safety, via its intelligent, out-of-the-box applications. Leading pharmaceutical companies recognize the new industry standard Saama is establishing for chief medical officers, directors of clinical operations, and their teams. In October 2021, the venture capital arms of Merck, Pfizer, Amgen, and McKesson, among others, invested $430 million in Saama. They are embracing how LSAC leverages smooth data flow from the patient to submission, enabling clinical trial sponsors and contract research organizations (CROs) to effective problem solving across clinical operations, medical review, data management, biostatistics, and pharmacovigilance.

The COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented challenges for the life sciences industry as they mobilized to respond to this global public health threat. What were Saama’s contributions to responding to the pandemic?

Saama helped re-write the clinical development playbook. Vaccines typically take decades to develop. Saama helped compress that timeline to less than one year – a previously unimaginable goal. Pfizer used Saama’s technology – a domain-centric, deep learning/AI system called Smart Data Quality (SDQ) – to help them bring the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine to patients before any other company. This accelerated clinical development helped to turn the tide on the global pandemic. There is no going back now, and Saama is committed to helping other biopharma companies replicate similar success across the therapeutic spectrum to prevent a default to pre-pandemic clinical development timelines.

What industry awards/recognitions has Saama recently received?

Last year Saama received eight industry awards, including:

• 2021’s “Most Promising Pharma and Life Sciences Solution Provider” by CIO Review.
• 2021’s “Most Innovative Companies” by PM360 – the fifth year in a row to receive one of this publication’s prestigious Innovations Awards.
• 2021’s “Top 50 Workplaces in India for Women” by the Great Place to Work Institute.

Additionally, Saama recently welcomed two biopharma industry leaders to the Saama Board of Directors: Ian Read, former CEO and Executive Chairman of Pfizer, and Clive Meanwell, former CEO of The Medicines Company, who has been consistently recognized as one of the industry’s most efficient clinical scientists in terms of bringing new therapies to market.

As a successful serial entrepreneur, what are the qualities that a fastest-growing company must have?

• Relentless enablement of customer experience with our offerings.
• Strategically and consistently evolving those offerings to attract and retain a deeper and broader audience.
• Talent that is continually groomed and nurtured to create a championship team.

According to you, what or who has been the key contributors in making Saama one of the fastest-growing companies? Are there any tips or advice you would like to share with the readers?

Since the advent of modern medicine over the last two centuries, there has been much progress. However, it has been limited to creating cures and preventions for less than ten percent of known illnesses. The world called on Saama to help solve the global pandemic for a new disease, COVID-19, and we delivered. Saama is committed to replicating that success across the therapeutic spectrum to address the other 90 percent of human disease. There has been extreme innovation over the last decade by the best minds in the world in creating AI that can be instantiated for solving the toughest health challenges. Saama is leveraging that to solve the medical problems currently facing humanity.

As the fastest growing company, what can we expect from Saama in the following year? Any major transformation or news that you would like to share with our readers?

Saama is committed to working on many unknown, rare diseases through our partnerships with our biotech customers. From a business perspective, developing drugs to treat rare diseases is extremely expensive and, though critically important to patients, often not profitable. Reducing the time and cost of developing such a drug allows a biotech company to focus on rare diseases as a viable option. Speed and quality are two big issues in this scenario and Saama enables both, helping biopharmaceuticals produce safer and more effective therapies for rare as well as more common diseases.

How has the life sciences industry indicated its support of Saama and recognition of Saama as an indispensable partner in clinical development?

Since October 2021, Saama has been partnering with the corporate venture arms of major pharmaceutical companies, such as Amgen, Merck, Pfizer, and others to redefine the drug development paradigm. Recognizing the critical role Saama played in expediting COVID-19 vaccine development, this unique industry consortium, alongside the global investment firm Carlyle, made a $430 million strategic growth investment in Saama. We welcome this exciting new partnership and look forward to working closely together to further transform the life sciences industry across other therapeutic categories.

What is the secret mantra for becoming the fastest-growing company?

“Be unreasonably aspirational in solving complex clinical development challenges.”

“We are committed to giving our life science partners the power to significantly reduce cycle times and see around corners without sacrificing quality to make confident business decisions for better clinical trial outcomes.”