Using Agile Design To Accelerate R&D

By Richard Young, Vice President, Vault CDMS

“Like going to space while still building the spacecraft.” That is how Michel Rider, vice president of digital, analytics, and performance, at GSK, likes to describe the transformation program underway in GSK’s development organization. It’s mission-critical for the R&D function to continue developing medicines and vaccines for patients as fast as possible, even while her team is reconstructing their technology environment.

In recent years, GSK has made huge advances in operational efficiency that have enabled it to rebuild the oncology business and engage in immunology and neuroscience. Success has been contingent on breaking the traditional ways of working that resulted in the development function following linear processes and avoiding manageable risks, for decades. This approach inhibited the function from running even mainstream adaptive clinical trials.