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CASE STUDY: TECHNOLOGY HORIZON SCANNING

Landscaping Technologies to Support a £1.3bn Investment in Life Sciences

With AMPLYFI, medical research charity LifeArc were able to create a comprehensive assessment of the technology landscape for assisted living with Motor Neurone Disease. 

LifeArc is a UK-based medical-research charity that aims to turn promising life-science ideas into medical advances to benefit patients. Their new strategic plans are to commit up to £1.3 billion by 2030 to support patient-focused life sciences.

“To be evidence-based in our decision making requires us to analyse vast amounts of unstructured data. AMPLYFI’s machine-driven technology has enabled us to achieve this breadth and depth of analysis which we would not have been able to do on our own.”

Paul Wright, LifeArc MND Translational Challenge Lead

Challenge

LifeArc identified Motor Neurone Disease (MND) as an area with high patient-need and considered technologies as a key way that could address quality of life improvements for those living with MND and their carers.

LifeArc wanted to review:

  • A high-level landscape comprehensively mapping relevant technologies;
  • An objective appraisal of the potential Quality-of-Life impact of each technology, its technology readiness level, and the barriers to adoption within MND;
  • A deep dive into high-potential technologies.

Solution

LifeArc engaged AMPLYFI’s insights automation platform to identify the most impactful technologies around which LifeArc can develop an investment and funding strategy to support MND patients.

Process:

  • AMPLYFI’s DeepInsight platform was used to harvest the surface and deep web for content related to Assisted Living for Motor Neurone Disease.
  • Approximately 300,000 articles, including patents, academic papers, and industry news, were identified and harvested into a LifeArc private library.
  • A human analyst would require around 23 years to read this number of articles – AMPLYFI’s machine reading pipeline read and analysed the entire document corpus in under 5 minutes, making the results available instantly for further investigation.

Impact

A process that would normally have taken months and consumed huge volumes of human resources, outsourcing costs or compromised evidence was delivered in 4 weeks at a fraction of the cost and effort of traditional projects.

LifeArc was able to create an objective and comprehensive assessment of the technology landscape for assisted living with Motor Neurone Disease, deep-diving into five candidate technology areas and selecting one area to build their funding strategy around.

LifeArc’s evidence-based approach has enabled them to act with conviction and develop a funding strategy that they hope will maximise the positive impact and Quality-of-Life improvements for those living with Motor Neurone Disease and their carers.

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