Digitisation of clinical records helps almirall break into new markets, allowing more patients to benefit

“This major digitisation project, the first of its kind, has allowed us to break into new markets. We have accelerated global product rollouts, while at the same time complying with local country legal frameworks.”

Minerva Casas Ventura, research and development archivist and trial master file specialist, Almirall

Challenge

To commercialise medicines in new markerts, Almirall needed to provide simple, speedy and secure access to all drug documentation and clinical results, to secure approval from local governing authorities.

Solution

Iron Mountain^® helped Almirall develop a holistic digital strategy based on a digitisation solution for centralising and digitising records, with secure full chain of custody throughout. All the files are available 24/7 through an Iron Mountain Connect^TM portal that can be accessed from anywhere, with role-based permissions.

Results

More patients can benefit from this medical treatment, improving the quality of lives. At the same time, Almirall has gained new routes to market and accelerated global product launches.

Aligning digital strategy to improve business efficiency and growth

Achieving two goals with one investment

Innovation partners in digital transformation

Present in 21 countries with 2,000 employees, Almirall is a global pharmaceutical company dedicated to dermatology and improving patients’ lives. Digitisation and flexible workplace transformation are integral to this mission as Almirall looks to drive efficiency and access new international markets.

“We outsourced our archiving to Iron Mountain more than a decade ago and have been innovation partners ever since,” says Minerva Casas Ventura. “The joint focus has been on advancing our international expansion with a unified digital strategy.”

Part of Almirall’s digital strategy involved minimising the use of paper documents through a project called Digital Workplace Transformation. Within this project, Almirall looked to Iron Mountain as a trusted expert partner to help address any ongoing requirements.

Fast entry to new markets

Alongside the Digital Workplace Transformation project there was a need to take an EU-approved product into the Chinese market. This led to the digitisation of all the documentation and clinical results associated with the medicine. The project involved a large number of documents that needed to be digitised in a short space of time, and which needed to be accessed easily and securely

“We needed to urgently provide a distributor with quick and easy access to all the documentation and clinical results for a drug,” says Casas. “The medicine had been approved in the EU for some time, but we had to satisfy regulatory requirements from authorities in China and other countries.”