Page 53 - SAMENA Trends - October 2019

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Microsoft and Novartis Announce Collaboration
to Transform Medicine with Artificial Intelligence

Novartis announced an important step in reimagining medicine by the world.” Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, added, “Our strategic
founding the Novartis AI innovation lab and by selecting Microsoft alliance will combine Novartis’ life sciences expertise with the
Corp. as its strategic AI and data-science partner for this effort. power of Azure and Microsoft AI. Together, we aim to address
The new lab aims to significantly bolster Novartis AI capabilities some of the biggest challenges facing the life sciences industry
from research through commercialization and help accelerate today and bring AI capabilities to every Novartis employee so they
the discovery and development of transformative medicines can unlock new insights as they work to discover new medicines
for patients worldwide. As part of the strategic collaboration and reduce patient costs.” Novartis is focusing itself as a leading
announced, Novartis and Microsoft have committed to a multi- medicines company powered by advanced therapies and data
year research and development effort. This strategic alliance will science. Going big on data and digital is a key strategic pillar that
focus on two core objectives: helps Novartis realize that ambition. Data science and digital
AI Empowerment. The lab will aim to bring the power of AI to technologies allow the company to reimagine how it innovates
the desktop of every Novartis associate. By bringing together in R&D, engages with patients and customers, and increases
vast amounts of Novartis datasets with Microsoft’s advanced AI operational efficiencies. Novartis focuses its efforts around four
solutions, the lab will aim to create new AI models and applications strategic digital priority areas:
that can augment our associates’ capabilities to take on the next Scaling 12 digital lighthouse projects: Build a strong foundation
wave of challenges in medicine. and jumpstart digital transformation
AI Exploration. The lab will use the power of AI to tackle some Make Novartis digital: sharing, learning and talent acquisition
of the hardest computational challenges within the life sciences, Becoming the #1 partner in the tech ecosystem: bridge Novartis
starting with generative chemistry, image segmentation & analysis with external expertise
for smart and personalized delivery of therapies, and optimization Bolder moves: lead through future disruptive healthcare scenarios
of cell and gene therapies at scale. with large-scale partnerships.
Microsoft and Novartis will also collaborate to develop and apply
next-generation AI platforms and processes that support future
programs across these two focus areas. The overall investment
will include project funding, subject-matter experts, technology,
and tools. Vas Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis, said, “As Novartis
continues evolving into a focused medicines company powered
by advanced therapy platforms and data science, alliances like
this will help us deliver on our purpose to reimagine medicine to
improve and extend lives. Pairing our deep knowledge of human
biology and medicine with Microsoft’s leading expertise in AI
could transform the way we discover and develop medicines for

Microsoft to Launch Two Microservice Projects on Github

The new open source projects are intended distributed systems”. Hence the point of available now. Dapr is not coupled to any
to speed deployment of microservices Dapr – which is itself in the early stages particular platform, rather applications
in the cloud or at the edge. The projects of development – is that it is designed run locally in a Kubernetes cluster or other
are Distributed Application Runtime to help developers deliver microservices hosting environments. The OAM standard
(Dapr), which is a runtime environment through the cloud or at the edge without emphasizes the separation between
for microservices and Open Application code changes. This is because language developer and operator on the grounds
Model (OAM) is a specification for running used for the services is irrelevant: Dapr’s that the former should be left to better
applications on Kubernetes and other individual building blocks can be are focus on the key elements of applications,
platforms. By 2022, 90% of new apps will accessed via a local hypertext transfer not the deployment goal. This separation
have microservice architectures according protocol (HTTP) or remote procedure call also means that reusable components
to predictions from IDC. According to a (gRPC) endpoint, so a separate software can be created and integrated individually.
Microsoft blog, microservice architecture’s development kit is not needed. Activities OAM was developed by Microsoft in
benefits include scalability, loose service including service calls, state management, collaboration with Alibaba Cloud, under the
coupling and independent deployments, publish-and-subscribe messages, and auspices of the Open Web Foundation. Like
but “this approach can come at a high event-driven resource bindings are Darp, OAM is platform independent.
cost of understanding and skilling on possible with building blocks that are

53 OCTOBER 2019