50%
less data pipeline dev time
5,000
records per second delivered for AI
>95%
AI data quality benchmark
To keep pace with digital therapeutics and forensic regulations, Dr. Reddy’s reimagined its cloud data strategy for the AI era. Now, the team uses Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) to automate data governance and quality across its data integration and engineering pipelines, speeding up project delivery and clinical AI use cases.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
We are in the business of providing access to innovative and affordable medicines to our patients, which is driven by our purpose of good health. The global pharmaceutical industries undergoing a massive shift, and there are three key optics, which are driving these massive shifts. The first is the emerging and evolving regulatory requirements. The second is the onset of competition with regards to digital therapeutics, and I think last but not the least, is the emerging requirements for the customized and personalized and targeted therapies. Every pharma organization needs to have ability to aggregate and look at and analyze data right to the granularity. At Adopt Redis, we bring data and AI to life by ensuring that data is right, trusted and is available to our business users. Informatica plays a pivotal role for us because that's one unified universal system that you're using across the organization. For all the markets, for almost 50 countries to look at data quality data with the right data quality is most important because r and d plays a pivotal role for any pharmaceutical organization.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
One of the things that we really liked about Informatica is one, it's a low-code, no-code platform. What that means is the speed agility of development of a new pipeline is much quicker. There is no dependence of these functions on the core data engineering teams. That has led to enormous effort saving. Plus, there is also an ability within the business to self service. As of today, we have more than 300 identified data stewards across the business because we have upskilled them. We designed our own e-learning module, which provided data stewards a view of the associated roles and responsibilities. It actually provided us an ability to define data quality rules across various dimensions. A successful AI implementation cannot happen without the right data using Informatica. We've actually designed a pipeline, which is pulling information of more than 2 billion compounds from a data source over to our data lake. Informatica can process transaction, which when we tested was close to 5,000 odd records per second. That normally would take months of time. Today can be completed in less than five minutes. That's where the interlock of Informatica in our overall architecture has helped us to deliver this r and d solution.
“The pharmaceutical industry is undergoing a massive shift. We needed to reassess our data strategy to ensure that we aggregate and provision the right data to our teams, who in turn can trust and analyze the data to drive the right outcomes.”
Maintaining 40 years of clinical innovation
Since its founding in 1984, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories has been committed to being first to market with innovative, affordable therapies, as summed up in its motto: "Good Health Can't Wait." Delivering on that promise requires not only deep science capabilities, but ready access to volumes of trusted data across everything from R&D and manufacturing to supply chain quality. That’s no easy feat when operating at Dr. Reddy’s global scale. Based in the high-tech corridor of Hyderabad, India, the company operates in over 70 countries and serves over 700 million patients every year through its innovative products and services.
When Anish Agarwal joined Dr. Reddy’s as Sr. Vice President and Global Head of Data and Analytics, several industry trends were increasing demands on data resources. Regulators sought a granular, forensic level of data scrutiny for every drug developed. The advent of personalized therapies and digital therapeutics created new streams of minute body data from wearable technologies.
Plus, Dr. Reddy’s board had established a focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GenAI) to speed up research and solve complex R&D problems, from drug formulations to molecule identification.
The company saw an opportunity to reimagine how the pharma leader manages its enterprise data. “The pharmaceutical industry is undergoing a massive shift," Agarwal explains. "We needed to reassess our data strategy to ensure that we aggregate and provision the right data to our teams, who in turn can trust and analyze the data to drive the right outcomes.”
“One of the things that we really like about Informatica is that it's a low-code, no-code platform, which means the speed of development of a new data pipeline is much quicker.”
Finding a cure for cloud data complexity
Faced with growing data volumes and velocity, Agarwal’s team decided to first address key legacy data constraints. Across the business, departments still relied heavily on core data engineering teams to provision trusted data. Dr. Reddy's multi-cloud strategy also included several data partners, including SAP for enterprise data (e.g. manufacturing, supply chain, finance) and Google Cloud data lakes for analytics, data science and AI and machine learning (ML) use cases.
This diverse technology stack necessitated a seamless and partner-agnostic approach to data management. Agarwal wanted a platform that could connect to any cloud or reference architecture, while using automation to eliminate manual work for his engineers. After evaluating options in the market, it was clear that Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) was the perfect remedy.
“One of the things that we really like about Informatica is that it's a low-code, no-code platform, which means the speed of development of a new data pipeline is much quicker,” Agarwal explains. Informatica's extensive library of metadata-aware cloud connectors ensures seamless integration with Dr. Reddy's existing systems. Built-in system dashboards allow the engineering team to continuously monitor and optimize their processes, as Informatica orchestrates data from Dr. Reddy’s golden sources and integrates those data pipelines into data lakes and warehouses.
“Informatica quickly became the backbone of our data strategy,” says Agarwal. “With IDMC, we can integrate our data for R&D, quality assurance and manufacturing into a unified, universal system. Data quality increases accuracy and trust within the business to use that data to make informed decisions.”
Positive data outcomes in record time
Dr. Reddy's took a unique approach to implementing IDMC, opting to own the implementation internally. This decision was a strategic move to build internal capabilities and reduce long-term dependence on external consultants. Agarwal explains, "We leverage the skills and learning modules available on the Informatica website, which are available at no cost, and it works brilliantly for us. Today, almost 50% of my data engineers are certified in Informatica and a large part will be certified over the coming year."
The IDMC solution at Dr. Reddy's includes three key components. Cloud Data Integration (CDI) merges data from multiple departments’ data sources into a unified pipeline, using low/no-code AI-powered automation and drag-and-drop graphic user interfaces (GUIs) to speed up design and development time. Cloud Data Governance and Catalog (CDGC) helps ensure that data is secure, accessible, properly organized and universally understood.
Cloud Data Quality (CDQ) helps cleanse and govern data assets, defining data quality rules across various dimensions (such as completeness, accuracy or comprehensiveness), and automatically creates data quality scorecards for every steward.
One of the most immediate outcomes is the stability of the new platform. "The data pipelines that are designed on Informatica saw a failure rate of zero," Agarwal states. "Each and every pipeline ran to its expectation on schedule as per the orchestrated timelines with zero failures."
This stability has a cascading effect on operational efficiency. With zero pipeline failures, support teams no longer need to spend time addressing stubborn maintenance problems. "Because we have zero issues, we can save almost 20% of monthly effort per engineer for remediating pipelines," Agarwal explains. This frees-up time, allowing engineers to focus on more strategic initiatives and AI-related experimentation.
IDMC modular architecture also saves significant time in data pipeline development. "For a project that would normally take four weeks of effort, today we are able to do it in two weeks," says Agarwal. This 50% reduction in development time greatly accelerates Dr. Reddy's data initiatives and improves their ability to respond quickly to new business requirements, from field data collection for a new COVID-19 vaccine to AI/ML models for small molecule drug discovery.
Lastly, by enabling a business glossary and end-to-end data lineage via CDGC, they help ensure not only complete visibility and traceability of data elements from source to final reports, but also provide stakeholders clearer insights into data origins and usage, fostering better decision-making processes.
A culture of healthy data stewardship
Just as important as these technical gains, Agarwal and his team are fostering a stronger culture of data accountability within Dr. Reddy's. Informatica cloud platform includes a centralized data catalog, glossaries and self-training modules to support a federated approach to data management. The company has identified and upskilled more than 300 data stewards across the business, empowering them with the knowledge and tools to manage their departments’ data quality effectively.
Perhaps most importantly, Dr. Reddy’s is now moving faster to support new AI clinical use cases, including drug discovery. As Agarwal notes, "we use Informatica to design a pipeline that pulls information on more than two billion compounds from a data source to our data lake, at a transaction speed of close to 5,000 records per second. A process that normally would take months can now be completed in less than five minutes."
This dramatic improvement in processing speed has transformative implications for Dr. Reddy's R&D efforts. By accelerating the analysis of compound data, the company can potentially identify promising drug candidates more quickly, speeding up the entire drug discovery process.
The company’s automated data quality scorecards also serve as a litmus test for new AI/ML initiatives. “Informatica helps us prioritize AI projects, by helping us know if a business domain's data quality is above a benchmark of 95% and ready for an AI initiative,” Agarwal explains. This capability has been instrumental in ensuring that only high-quality data is used for AI and analytics projects, reducing the risk of errors and improving the reliability of insights.
Expanding therapies and lowering costs
These many combined benefits are a clear win for Dr. Reddy’s and patients around the world. Trusted data is speeding up the development of new therapies and clinical AI-enabled solutions. Low-code automation and pre-built connectors unlock huge time and resources savings in multi-cloud data management. In less than two years, the investment into IDMC is already “cost-positive,” and continuing to produce greater ROI each quarter.
Following its successful implementation of CDI, CDGC and CDQ, the team is now exploring Master Data Management (MDM) use cases, as well as advanced Data Observability for monitoring and remediating data in transit. Agarwal is also excited about the potential of CLAIRE GPT, the generative AI-powered data management solution from Informatica, which is provided in-platform and gives Dr. Reddy’s an option to contain and manage costs. “The recent integration of GPT speaks volumes about Informatica’s ability to continuously innovate and exceed customer requirements."
As Dr. Reddy's continues to drive pharma innovation and first-to-market solutions, their new foundation of trusted cloud data plays a crucial role. "At Dr. Reddy's, we bring data and AI to life by following one simple rule: democratized access to trusted data," Agarwal concludes. This approach, powered by Informatica IDMC, is helping Dr. Reddy's fulfill their mission of making innovative medicines more accessible and affordable for patients worldwide, in record time – for health issues that can’t wait.
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