Guest Speaker:
Transcripts
Hello and welcome to Tech Lyceum, a podcast from Birlasoft. I'm your host, Neerja, and today we are diving into an interesting topic on the podcast, transformations in the life sciences industry and the role of testing as a service. Joining us to give us all the insights. Are two of our industry leaders. We've got Shephali Sharma, Vice President and vertical delivery head for Life Sciences. And we've got Vishvesh Arumugam, Senior Director and Head of testing practice. Together, we are going to take a journey into the fascinating world of Life Sciences, exploring how testing as a service has evolved and become an integral part of the business processes. We will uncover what makes Birlasoft unique, setting it apart in this industry, let's bring on our guests, Shephali,Vishvesh.
Q: Shephali, could you share your views on the life sciences industry? What is happening? What's new, and how is the industry growing, given the significant changes in regulatory requirements as well, how is Birlasoft Adapting to address these challenges?
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Speaker – Shephali - 01:16
Sure. Well, hello everyone, and thank you once again, Neerja for having us for this discussion today and talking about, you know, the life sciences industry, it is evolving at a rapid pace. Of course, bringing both exciting opportunities for us and, you know, significant challenges as well. If you look at the positive side of this, we are seeing incredible advancements in automation, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and conversational AI interfaces. But it's not all that smooth sailing as well. The industry faces tremendous challenge in keeping up with the fast pace of this technological changes. You know, before we even think and settle, we have new technologies gaining momentum, and it is imperative that we keep pace with this to remain relevant in the tech industry, pharma and med tech companies especially are at the forefront of digital transformation, optimizing and consolidating data platforms, constantly investing in technology innovation, and I must say, understanding the importance of data and AI on top of it has never been deeper enough. Gen AI is truly revolutionizing the life sciences sector by leveraging, you know, vast data sets and the advanced AI capabilities of tech companies. It's transforming everything from drug discovery to manufacturing and commercialization. And in this entire transformative journey, testing as a service becomes even more crucial for us. You know, it ensures system reliability, data integrity, regulatory compliance, you know, making it an indispensable part of the entire process. And of course, today, we're going to talk a little bit more about how we have been helping you know our customers, by setting up these quality assurance center of excellences that integrates into our customers transformation journey.
Sure. Well, hello everyone, and thank you once again, Neerja for having us for this discussion today and talking about, you know, the life sciences industry, it is evolving at a rapid pace. Of course, bringing both exciting opportunities for us and, you know, significant challenges as well. If you look at the positive side of this, we are seeing incredible advancements in automation, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and conversational AI interfaces. But it's not all that smooth sailing as well. The industry faces tremendous challenge in keeping up with the fast pace of this technological changes. You know, before we even think and settle, we have new technologies gaining momentum, and it is imperative that we keep pace with this to remain relevant in the tech industry, pharma and med tech companies especially are at the forefront of digital transformation, optimizing and consolidating data platforms, constantly investing in technology innovation, and I must say, understanding the importance of data and AI on top of it has never been deeper enough. Gen AI is truly revolutionizing the life sciences sector by leveraging, you know, vast data sets and the advanced AI capabilities of tech companies. It's transforming everything from drug discovery to manufacturing and commercialization. And in this entire transformative journey, testing as a service becomes even more crucial for us. You know, it ensures system reliability, data integrity, regulatory compliance, you know, making it an indispensable part of the entire process. And of course, today, we're going to talk a little bit more about how we have been helping you know our customers, by setting up these quality assurance center of excellences that integrates into our customers transformation journey.
Speaker – Neerja - 03:23
Yes, we definitely will be diving deeper into that. Thank you. Shephali, you've touched upon some very key aspects. And Vishvesh, if I can bring you in here,
Q: Where do you think testing and overall software quality come into play? How are we ensuring that our software quality seamlessly integrates into our customers transformation journeys.
Yes, we definitely will be diving deeper into that. Thank you. Shephali, you've touched upon some very key aspects. And Vishvesh, if I can bring you in here,
Q: Where do you think testing and overall software quality come into play? How are we ensuring that our software quality seamlessly integrates into our customers transformation journeys.
Speaker – Vishvesh - 03:44
Hello everyone. Thank you so much for having us here. Neerja, it's an interesting question, right? As Shephali mentioned, the industry is really going through some big changes, and testing is right at the heart of it all. It's not just a step in the process anymore. I must say, it's a key player that can make or break large transformations. Speaking about life sciences, world, many customers are upgrading their COVID and there's a big push towards improving their digital transformations. Shephali and I attended a workshop in early 2024 there was discussions and significant focus on enterprise data modernization, and also increased in adoption of AI and GenAI for their business value. In line with all of these transformations that's happening in the industry, testing has really stepped up its game. It's no longer just finding bugs anymore. It's about ensuring business processes run smoothly and enabling the automated process orchestration occurs in business value chain, and also unlocking value with Gen AI, right? That's become the more focus area in the industry in the last few months and years, right? Plus in the life sciences, domain, testing is crucial from a regular. Tree compliance, perspective, verification, validation are essential for getting approvals from regulatory bodies, ensuring that medical devices and software are safe for end users.
Hello everyone. Thank you so much for having us here. Neerja, it's an interesting question, right? As Shephali mentioned, the industry is really going through some big changes, and testing is right at the heart of it all. It's not just a step in the process anymore. I must say, it's a key player that can make or break large transformations. Speaking about life sciences, world, many customers are upgrading their COVID and there's a big push towards improving their digital transformations. Shephali and I attended a workshop in early 2024 there was discussions and significant focus on enterprise data modernization, and also increased in adoption of AI and GenAI for their business value. In line with all of these transformations that's happening in the industry, testing has really stepped up its game. It's no longer just finding bugs anymore. It's about ensuring business processes run smoothly and enabling the automated process orchestration occurs in business value chain, and also unlocking value with Gen AI, right? That's become the more focus area in the industry in the last few months and years, right? Plus in the life sciences, domain, testing is crucial from a regular. Tree compliance, perspective, verification, validation are essential for getting approvals from regulatory bodies, ensuring that medical devices and software are safe for end users.
Speaker – Neerja - 05:12
All right, thank you, Vishvesh, for that perspective and Shephali. Back to you. It's fascinating to see the rise of AI, isn't it.
Q; How do you think AI is impacting the life sciences industry overall? And what about automation and other technology levels? How are they shaping the industry?
All right, thank you, Vishvesh, for that perspective and Shephali. Back to you. It's fascinating to see the rise of AI, isn't it.
Q; How do you think AI is impacting the life sciences industry overall? And what about automation and other technology levels? How are they shaping the industry?
Speaker – Shephali - 05:29
Interesting question. Neerja, yes, absolutely. So life sciences industry, for sure, is in for the rapid phase of innovation. You know, with AI, of course, leading the charge in 2023 the static statistics do show that the usfd approved more novel medical technologies than ever before, with 185 of those approvals being a being AI led technologies and Birlasoft, You know, so which big talk about alluded you know how important the AI technologies is and how testing has also been evolving. Right? At Birlasoft, we have created strong capabilities in AI and Gen AI, including a Gen AI Center of Excellence, to meet these Nobel customer requirements. In fact, we have also developed an in house platform called Birlasoft cogito, of you know, for the Gen AI app development, which also includes the Gen AI based test automation platform, which is links both together, will not only significantly speed up our app development life cycle, but also digitize the entire testing life cycle. And if we talk about the Gen AI capabilities across, you know, the business value chain for our customers. You know, for instance, you know in the pharma sector, our Gen AI and RPA solutions help in accelerating drug discovery through advanced summarization, visualizations and predictive modeling, the use of technology in pharma, COVID especially, has evolved significantly from manual paper based processes to adoption of digital technologies like integration of real world data sources, adoption of cloud computing, automation and centralized data repositories, plethora of advanced technologies are coming into play, but if we really want this advanced technology usage to be impactful, data solutions must be thoroughly validated and vetted to ensure that the data analytics being conducted is valid and really drives value, and that is where our testing COEs help us. And as Vish,alluded right, testing is no longer just about finding bugs. It is. It is about ensuring business processes run smoothly.
Interesting question. Neerja, yes, absolutely. So life sciences industry, for sure, is in for the rapid phase of innovation. You know, with AI, of course, leading the charge in 2023 the static statistics do show that the usfd approved more novel medical technologies than ever before, with 185 of those approvals being a being AI led technologies and Birlasoft, You know, so which big talk about alluded you know how important the AI technologies is and how testing has also been evolving. Right? At Birlasoft, we have created strong capabilities in AI and Gen AI, including a Gen AI Center of Excellence, to meet these Nobel customer requirements. In fact, we have also developed an in house platform called Birlasoft cogito, of you know, for the Gen AI app development, which also includes the Gen AI based test automation platform, which is links both together, will not only significantly speed up our app development life cycle, but also digitize the entire testing life cycle. And if we talk about the Gen AI capabilities across, you know, the business value chain for our customers. You know, for instance, you know in the pharma sector, our Gen AI and RPA solutions help in accelerating drug discovery through advanced summarization, visualizations and predictive modeling, the use of technology in pharma, COVID especially, has evolved significantly from manual paper based processes to adoption of digital technologies like integration of real world data sources, adoption of cloud computing, automation and centralized data repositories, plethora of advanced technologies are coming into play, but if we really want this advanced technology usage to be impactful, data solutions must be thoroughly validated and vetted to ensure that the data analytics being conducted is valid and really drives value, and that is where our testing COEs help us. And as Vish,alluded right, testing is no longer just about finding bugs. It is. It is about ensuring business processes run smoothly.
Speaker – Neerja - 07:59
Another big trend in the industry seems to be data now, right?
Q: Vishvesh, with data being the new gold and industries finally acknowledging its value, how do you think it's going to impact the quality aspects?
Another big trend in the industry seems to be data now, right?
Q: Vishvesh, with data being the new gold and industries finally acknowledging its value, how do you think it's going to impact the quality aspects?
Speaker – Vishvesh - 08:14
That's an important question. Neerja, right. We're noticing a significant shift in the ways of working with everything becoming data driven. Today, we all understand data falls in immense value. As Shephali was alluring earlier, our customers are increasingly eager to adopt and modernize their data infrastructure. For one of our customers, we partnered with them on their MDM transformation journey. When we got into discussions with them, the customer had a lot of questions and, you know, challenges in their mind as to how this will become a successful implementation. There are real valid reasons for their, you know, questions as well, right the some of the real valid reasons are the volume of the data and the sensitivity and the confidential information that the data carried, and also legacy information, lot of business data which was there and which is only with within SMEs hands, right? And you know, the availability of SMEs time was very limited with all of these challenges. We took this in hand and we got engaged with them, and then we defined the data validation end to end, data validation strategy and the tooling strategy as well, right? And as Shephali said earlier at Birlasoft, we are a big believers in automated solution across the board, and especially when it comes to data quality, it becomes even more pertinent that, you know, we use automated solutions to validate the full set of data so that it can be consumed and gives a better value for the business. As part of the implementation, we did automate a lot of sophisticated use cases and automate the entire execution and then produce results out of it. We've also done similar engagements in different use cases for other customers in life, senses, world and banking, financial services, insurance and manufacturing sectors as well, data validation. Typically involves multiple areas, but there's been more focus around three or four areas right now. One is data pipeline testing. As the data moves across the pipeline, we'll have to ensure that the data is really producing the value they're supposed to then next is, as we all are implementing models to, you know, use AI and GenAI, right the data model validation becomes more important. And the other important aspect is, during the modernization phase, there's a lot of migration which is expected to happen, and that migration has to be, you know, made sure that it is intact and is not losing the value it is supposed to. From that perspective, running a lot of tests to ensure that the data is, you know, the quality data is getting transformed. And doing all of these things manually is time consuming, and it's costly, right? That's where this automated solution becomes really handy. The other aspect is, Gen AI is moving at a lightning speed today, just like an f1 race, right? To stay ahead of the curve, we specialize in Gen AI model testing, covering various parameters like hallucination, the biases and drift validation, so that we can ensure that the functional integrity of the Gen AI applications produces the value for business. And we firmly believe that the quality of data will be a game changer going forward.
That's an important question. Neerja, right. We're noticing a significant shift in the ways of working with everything becoming data driven. Today, we all understand data falls in immense value. As Shephali was alluring earlier, our customers are increasingly eager to adopt and modernize their data infrastructure. For one of our customers, we partnered with them on their MDM transformation journey. When we got into discussions with them, the customer had a lot of questions and, you know, challenges in their mind as to how this will become a successful implementation. There are real valid reasons for their, you know, questions as well, right the some of the real valid reasons are the volume of the data and the sensitivity and the confidential information that the data carried, and also legacy information, lot of business data which was there and which is only with within SMEs hands, right? And you know, the availability of SMEs time was very limited with all of these challenges. We took this in hand and we got engaged with them, and then we defined the data validation end to end, data validation strategy and the tooling strategy as well, right? And as Shephali said earlier at Birlasoft, we are a big believers in automated solution across the board, and especially when it comes to data quality, it becomes even more pertinent that, you know, we use automated solutions to validate the full set of data so that it can be consumed and gives a better value for the business. As part of the implementation, we did automate a lot of sophisticated use cases and automate the entire execution and then produce results out of it. We've also done similar engagements in different use cases for other customers in life, senses, world and banking, financial services, insurance and manufacturing sectors as well, data validation. Typically involves multiple areas, but there's been more focus around three or four areas right now. One is data pipeline testing. As the data moves across the pipeline, we'll have to ensure that the data is really producing the value they're supposed to then next is, as we all are implementing models to, you know, use AI and GenAI, right the data model validation becomes more important. And the other important aspect is, during the modernization phase, there's a lot of migration which is expected to happen, and that migration has to be, you know, made sure that it is intact and is not losing the value it is supposed to. From that perspective, running a lot of tests to ensure that the data is, you know, the quality data is getting transformed. And doing all of these things manually is time consuming, and it's costly, right? That's where this automated solution becomes really handy. The other aspect is, Gen AI is moving at a lightning speed today, just like an f1 race, right? To stay ahead of the curve, we specialize in Gen AI model testing, covering various parameters like hallucination, the biases and drift validation, so that we can ensure that the functional integrity of the Gen AI applications produces the value for business. And we firmly believe that the quality of data will be a game changer going forward.
Speaker – Neerja - 11:20
Vishvesh, it really does sound like an exciting time to be in life sciences, right? I am sure Shephali would agree. And
Q: Shephali, where do you think Birlasoft advantage lies here? What can we do that really excites our customers?
Vishvesh, it really does sound like an exciting time to be in life sciences, right? I am sure Shephali would agree. And
Q: Shephali, where do you think Birlasoft advantage lies here? What can we do that really excites our customers?
Speaker – Shephali - 11:34
So Neerja, I think Vish just made a statement a minute before, right? That Gen AI is moving at a lightning speed, just like an f1 race, and I think that exactly what I believe is the future for the life sciences industry also right. It lies in AI Artificial Intelligence. And early adopters of AI will start to see the benefits of scale and gain the first mover advantage. Companies who have already adopted Gen AI are already have already started to see, you know, productivity benefits, beginning with low hanging fruits like CO pilots, across various functions. I think companies are exploring the impact of Gen AI on commercial and operational roles. And with our Gen AI COEs, we can solve pharma and med tech business problems by leveraging our capabilities in both domain and technology. And like Vish mentioned with our business, Birlasoft testing as a service, COE as well, we focus on both quality assurance and quality control, which is the most important today in this age where data plays a very big role, and particularly if I talk about, you know, testing,and Vish knows this very well. We started our testing practice, you know, where we were getting engaged with customers by being embedded with the project and getting siloed. But over the period of over so many years, we realized that we could bring in true value by creating a center of excellence for our customers as well, the way we have it internally for Birlasoft, and which I'm sure you remember the first COE that we had set up for our large med tech organization, where we brought in the business domain, angle the automation first and AI as an engine and larger synergies across units in an organization together to the larger transformation journey, rather than being just project specific, that resulted in, you know, cycle time reduction, cost savings via automation, process efficiencies for our customer. So overall, if you ask, at Birlasoft, we are well prepared to meet evolving customer demands. Testing as a COE is one of the examples that we have spoken about today, but there is much more that we have in Birlasoft and the and in the life sciences industry, in our unit, with our capabilities and early adopter advantage, we are equipped to meet customer needs effectively and looking forward to embed, you know, ourselves and our customers translation journeys.
So Neerja, I think Vish just made a statement a minute before, right? That Gen AI is moving at a lightning speed, just like an f1 race, and I think that exactly what I believe is the future for the life sciences industry also right. It lies in AI Artificial Intelligence. And early adopters of AI will start to see the benefits of scale and gain the first mover advantage. Companies who have already adopted Gen AI are already have already started to see, you know, productivity benefits, beginning with low hanging fruits like CO pilots, across various functions. I think companies are exploring the impact of Gen AI on commercial and operational roles. And with our Gen AI COEs, we can solve pharma and med tech business problems by leveraging our capabilities in both domain and technology. And like Vish mentioned with our business, Birlasoft testing as a service, COE as well, we focus on both quality assurance and quality control, which is the most important today in this age where data plays a very big role, and particularly if I talk about, you know, testing,and Vish knows this very well. We started our testing practice, you know, where we were getting engaged with customers by being embedded with the project and getting siloed. But over the period of over so many years, we realized that we could bring in true value by creating a center of excellence for our customers as well, the way we have it internally for Birlasoft, and which I'm sure you remember the first COE that we had set up for our large med tech organization, where we brought in the business domain, angle the automation first and AI as an engine and larger synergies across units in an organization together to the larger transformation journey, rather than being just project specific, that resulted in, you know, cycle time reduction, cost savings via automation, process efficiencies for our customer. So overall, if you ask, at Birlasoft, we are well prepared to meet evolving customer demands. Testing as a COE is one of the examples that we have spoken about today, but there is much more that we have in Birlasoft and the and in the life sciences industry, in our unit, with our capabilities and early adopter advantage, we are equipped to meet customer needs effectively and looking forward to embed, you know, ourselves and our customers translation journeys.
Speaker – Neerja - 14:13
Yeah, that's great, because I think for Birlasoft, we've always been very good at adapting to change, and it seems like that is the need of the hour. Testing needs to keep up with the rapid changes in the life sciences industry.
Q: Vishvesh, how do you think Birlasoft is doing in that regard? How are we using testing automation and generative AI, to ensure the reliability and safety of medical devices?
Yeah, that's great, because I think for Birlasoft, we've always been very good at adapting to change, and it seems like that is the need of the hour. Testing needs to keep up with the rapid changes in the life sciences industry.
Q: Vishvesh, how do you think Birlasoft is doing in that regard? How are we using testing automation and generative AI, to ensure the reliability and safety of medical devices?
Speaker – Vishvesh - 14:38
Birlasoft, we have a mature testing capability, our testing Innovation Lab and Quality Engineering Innovation Team continuously monitor technological advancements and bring in the latest and greatest to our offerings and solutions. And that has made us to stay ahead of the curve. And also, customers have appreciated our readiness for any you know, engagement that we want to start. We were able to. Start quickly, if you ask me, what is the differentiation, right that you were asking earlier? Also, There are four things that sets us apart and enables us to deliver quality with speed. First is our AI based testing as a service offering, which is an outcome based execution model, where the end to end ownership of quality lies with Birlasoft, and we make sure that the quality is delivered to the business, which is actually powered by our Genie based test automation platform links, which digitizes the entire testing life cycle.The next is all about, you know, how are we ready from an industry standpoint, right? Because testing is a horizontal which cuts across all the industries, but we are very focused on developing and building industry centric solutions and accelerators so that we can actually use that and jump start engagements.
Other thing is our extensive experience, transformational assurance experience and expertise across broad spectrum of technology and business domains makes us deliver the results to our customers. We use Gen AI to revolutionize the way we test our new platform. Links leverages a Gen AI You know, to optimize test design from a generation capability. Shift clip the integration testing towards the left side of it and make test execution more smarter and intelligent. Derive insights and take actions automatically and intelligently. We've already leveraged some of these capabilities and deployed solutions to our customers, as Shephali was saying earlier, right? I still remember, you know, when we started this engagement, and now how they transform that testing for one of our large Life Sciences customers, right? We have successfully embedded AI into their quality lifecycle. We are running an AI based testing as a service with automation, first in AI as the engine and enabled with the domain led testing team members. This has resulted in cost savings, primarily about 6 million of USD savings via automation, productivity levers and cycle time reduction of about 30% and the most important aspect is zero defect production, defect right in the last two years, zero defect is the need of the hour with respect to the safety of the software and med devices for end users, you always say quality in life sciences starts with precise software testing, and there is no room For Robus moment, here we are frontiers in the testing the future of Life Sciences.
Birlasoft, we have a mature testing capability, our testing Innovation Lab and Quality Engineering Innovation Team continuously monitor technological advancements and bring in the latest and greatest to our offerings and solutions. And that has made us to stay ahead of the curve. And also, customers have appreciated our readiness for any you know, engagement that we want to start. We were able to. Start quickly, if you ask me, what is the differentiation, right that you were asking earlier? Also, There are four things that sets us apart and enables us to deliver quality with speed. First is our AI based testing as a service offering, which is an outcome based execution model, where the end to end ownership of quality lies with Birlasoft, and we make sure that the quality is delivered to the business, which is actually powered by our Genie based test automation platform links, which digitizes the entire testing life cycle.The next is all about, you know, how are we ready from an industry standpoint, right? Because testing is a horizontal which cuts across all the industries, but we are very focused on developing and building industry centric solutions and accelerators so that we can actually use that and jump start engagements.
Other thing is our extensive experience, transformational assurance experience and expertise across broad spectrum of technology and business domains makes us deliver the results to our customers. We use Gen AI to revolutionize the way we test our new platform. Links leverages a Gen AI You know, to optimize test design from a generation capability. Shift clip the integration testing towards the left side of it and make test execution more smarter and intelligent. Derive insights and take actions automatically and intelligently. We've already leveraged some of these capabilities and deployed solutions to our customers, as Shephali was saying earlier, right? I still remember, you know, when we started this engagement, and now how they transform that testing for one of our large Life Sciences customers, right? We have successfully embedded AI into their quality lifecycle. We are running an AI based testing as a service with automation, first in AI as the engine and enabled with the domain led testing team members. This has resulted in cost savings, primarily about 6 million of USD savings via automation, productivity levers and cycle time reduction of about 30% and the most important aspect is zero defect production, defect right in the last two years, zero defect is the need of the hour with respect to the safety of the software and med devices for end users, you always say quality in life sciences starts with precise software testing, and there is no room For Robus moment, here we are frontiers in the testing the future of Life Sciences.
Speaker – Neerja - 17:25
Vishvesh Shephali, this has been such a great conversation. Thank you for those incredible insights, and we've learned a lot about how pharma and med tech companies are at the forefront of digital transformation, optimizing data platforms for scalable Gen AI applications, right? And how Gen AI is shaping the sector by enhancing drug discovery, manufacturing and commercialization. Unfortunately, we are out of time on the podcast for today, but it's clear that testing as a service is vital for system reliability, data integrity and regulatory compliance. And of course, Birlasoft is leveraging the links platform using AI and Gen AI in its testing services to ensure quality, safety, optimized test design, make test execution smarter and ultimately derive insights to act accordingly. Thank you so much Shephali and Vishvesh for joining us. It was a pleasure speaking with you both.
Vishvesh Shephali, this has been such a great conversation. Thank you for those incredible insights, and we've learned a lot about how pharma and med tech companies are at the forefront of digital transformation, optimizing data platforms for scalable Gen AI applications, right? And how Gen AI is shaping the sector by enhancing drug discovery, manufacturing and commercialization. Unfortunately, we are out of time on the podcast for today, but it's clear that testing as a service is vital for system reliability, data integrity and regulatory compliance. And of course, Birlasoft is leveraging the links platform using AI and Gen AI in its testing services to ensure quality, safety, optimized test design, make test execution smarter and ultimately derive insights to act accordingly. Thank you so much Shephali and Vishvesh for joining us. It was a pleasure speaking with you both.
Speaker – Shephali - 18:22
Thank you so much. Neerja, it was great.
Thank you so much. Neerja, it was great.
Speaker – Vishvesh –18:24
Thanks, Neerja
Thanks, Neerja
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