Webinars & Events Archives

QuartzBio’s Biomarker Intelligence Platform, powered by AI: An ecosystem of domain- and task-specific small LLMs trained by fine-tuning existing foundational models (FMs).

“Harnessing Insights Across Clinical Trials with the Power of Conversation” — a presentation by Tobi Guennel, Ph.D., head of product development and innovation at QuartzBio

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Summary:

Discussions were lively at the “Digitization of Clinical Development & Clinical Trials” symposium at last week’s Bio-IT World conference.

Addressing an audience of biotech and pharma IT and data leaders, QuartzBio’s Tobi Guennel gave a provocative presentation on how deploying generative AI can amplify the ability of precision medicine approaches to accelerate drug development.

“It’s great to have a clinical trials-focused session at Bio-IT World, and being able to share success stories, especially about AI, in this landscape,” said Guennel. “We are firm believers that iteration and collaboration can only improve technology and create new paths for innovation.”

Guennel’s narrative centered around QuartzBio’s Biomarker Intelligence Platform, powered by AI, which allows precision medicine development teams to extract the most value from clinical trial samples and exploratory biomarker data.

“One benefit of natural language understanding capabilities of conversational AI is that a broad range of user personas, with diverse roles and functions, can interact with and extract insights from a unified, singular data ecosystem of sample and biomarker data.

Teams such as data science, translational research, and biosample or biomarker operations can now interrogate a unified data asset using natural language.”

Considerations for developing a large language model (LLM) ecosystem for precision medicine

To build a solid GAI framework to enable our sample and biomarker intelligence products, the QuartzBio team asked themselves:

What LLMs are needed to support our domain and the tasks performed through the components of our products?
How can we integrate these models into a scalable GAI workflow to support user stories and workflows without having to re-invent the wheel as we move from use case to use case?

Considerations for developing individual LLMs:

LLM Development

Leverage existing Foundational Models: Start with existing powerful language models that are right-sized.
Fine-Tuning: Customize these models for specific domains and tasks.
Small LLMs: Create smaller, specialized models for targeted applications for improved cost/accuracy.

GAI Integration

Prompt Engineering: Design tailored prompts to guide LLM behavior based on supported tasks.
Leverage RAG: Combine LLMs with retrieval mechanisms for enhanced performance.
User Agents: Implement user-specific agents to optimize model interactions and leverage live data.

Benefits

Precision: Fine-tuned LLMs provide accurate and context-aware responses for specific tasks.
Efficiency: Smaller models reduce computational overhead.

Supporting the entire precision medicine lifecycle

QuartzBio is integrating this GAI framework seamlessly into its Biomarker Intelligence platform to support a broad range of user stories and flows with a suite of SaaS products.

Sponsors are using the platform and products to build an interconnected data asset and, subsequently, draw insights via QuartzBio’s Biomarker Intelligence tools powered by conversational AI.

Sponsors leverage the platform as a force multiplier by creating internal efficiencies. Their teams are free to focus on insight generation rather than data wrangling.

Further, the QuartzBio platform amplifies knowledge by centralizing information and insights and making these easily consumable by a wide range of stakeholders. Ultimately, this increased access to intelligence enables sponsor teams to advance Precision Medicine objectives, such as accelerating patient selection strategies, identifying drug targets, and driving clinical trial efficiency.

Learn more: Watch a demo of QuartzBio’s AI-powered platform

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2024 Biomarker Intelligence Summit Recap - Boston

Last week, biomarker intelligence leaders from Boston-area R&D organizations got a firsthand look at the powerful predictive and prescriptive intelligence that will soon infuse QuartzBio’s AI Biomarker Intelligence Platform, after sharing common challenges facing data-rich precision medicine clinical programs.

Even though our guests represented organizations that varied in size, number of clinical trials, and therapeutic area, they all shared the challenges of disconnected technology and data ecosystems. Over three million data points are generated per clinical trial and over 70% of that data comes from labs. Sponsor organizations are realizing that they are missing opportunities to advance precision medicine if they do not address their data and technology challenges.

The challenges of disconnected technology and data ecosystems in clinical trials result in delays, fragmented insights, and missed opportunities.

Guest speaker and AI expert, Srivatsan Nagaraja, described the potential of generative AI (GAI) and large language models to overcome these challenges and speed decision-making; not surprisingly, 76% of biopharma companies are investing in AI.

The numbers -- Generative AI overcomes data challenges, speeds decisions.

Srivatsan left the audience with two takeaways:

“Generative AI is not going away – and the journey is as important as the destination.”

The journey, in this context, refers to

How the GAI model is trained and prompted – ideally, by subject matter experts and domain-specific knowledge, iteratively improving the value derived from AI
The quality, structure, and format of the underlying data

The QuartzBio team gave a quick demo of their AI-powered Biomarker Intelligence Platform, showing guests how they could get a 360° look around their sample ecosystem in seconds.

We wrapped up the Biomarker Intelligence Summit with a networking happy hour and hands-on exploration stations. Guests interacted with QuartzBio’s conversational AI Virtual Assistant, experiencing how it could help derive valuable insights quickly and easily.

Have a burning question for our team and/or the QuartzBio AI Virtual Assistant?

Book a demo with us and explore

Key Takeaways from SCOPE Summit for Clinical Operations Executives 2024

Tobi Guennel, PhD, QuartzBio’s Senior Vice President of Product & Chief Architect, energized the Biomarkers & Precision Medicine track at SCOPE 2024 by showing how generative AI can address challenges faced biospecimen and biomarker operations teams, as well as clinical and translational teams, when gathering insights on samples across all parts of a complex biomarker data ecosystem.

Sponsor teams need faster answers from disconnected data streams.

Sponsor teams want more clarity. The current chaotic state of biospecimen management hinders speedy decision-making. Because of the influx of specimen (and their associated data) coming from hundreds of varied locations (in just as many varied formats), teams can feel overwhelmed with the sheer volume of information to manage.

“What’s the status of today’s shipments?” “Where is this sample’s location?” “How is Site 53’s sample collection performance?” “What’s the current turnaround time for genetic testing?”

How is the current system holding businesses back?

Quality data is the foundation of precision medicine but most of this critical data is siloed, inconsistent, and inaccessible. In fact, half of all translational scientists in our industry struggle to access the insights they need to complete their work effectively. Further, many of these scientists report only 60% confidence in the accuracy of this data when manual data entry is considered, and the revenue loss due to data ecosystem challenges is over $31B annually. But, for the companies who can overcome these data and technology ecosystem challenges, the reward is great: these companies are 23x more likely to be profitable than those who cannot.

Generative AI overcomes data challenges

As discussed at the SCOPE Day 1 plenary panel on generative AI, there is now broad awareness of the potential for AI to accelerate drug development. Specifically, we heard how AI is already enabling universal data structuring, harnessing large language models to tackle clinical research tasks, and integrating multimodal data.

Generative AI empowers drug development teams to overcome data and technology ecosystem challenges because it can automate data management tasks and break down data silos, helping businesses gain a holistic view of their operations, and free teams to make more informed decisions, faster. Instead of requiring an extensive understanding of coding and statistical modeling, generative AI now allows users to ask requests in plain language. Ask a question, get an answer.

Generative AI applied to both data management AND business intelligence drives precision medicine at scale

With the AI-enabled Biomarker Intelligence Platform, QuartzBio is giving sponsors a smart and scalable platform for deploying generative AI to enhance decision-making throughout the precision medicine R&D lifecycle. This platform is built on a foundation of high-quality data, because insights mean nothing if you don’t first ensure quality data. QuartzBio’s AI-powered data management tools are tailor-made to streamline data ingestion, QC, and mapping for drug development workflows, helping to improve data quality and reduce errors by leveraging automation to surface data issues to stakeholders.

Layered on these data management tools, the platform contains a suite of business intelligence tools that we call biomarker intelligence tools because they were purpose-built to address the challenges in biomarker-guided drug development. These tools are designed by subject matter experts to improve business agility through data exploration, dashboards, analytics, and reporting.

QuartzBio Biomarker Intelligence Platform

Leveraging AI across the platform makes our data management and business intelligence tools smarter, easier to use and more efficient to configure. To create a true force amplifier and decision accelerator, we’ve built our AI-powered Virtual Assistant. This assistant transforms the way users interact with our platform to shorten the time from having a question to receiving easily consumable information. The Virtual Assistant is your personal guide through our Biomarker Intelligence Platform, allowing you to quickly navigate to the right tool and streamline your data management and business intelligence.

The presentation highlighted four common use cases of the AI Virtual Assistant as applied to QuartzBio’s virtual Sample Inventory Management SaaS product:

Sample monitoring for collection, testing, shipping and storage
Monitoring vendor performance
Tracking clinical trial site performance
Monitoring query trends in real time and surfacing root causes

Want to learn more about effective sample intelligence?

Watch “Taming clinical sample chaos with conversational AI: Talk to your data to get fast answers on biospecimen status and consent”

Watch the webinar on demand

February 11-14, 2024 | Orlando, FL, USA

Curious if an AI-enabled solution is right for your clinical sample management? At this year’s SCOPE (Summit for Clinical Operations Executives) conference we’ll be presenting:

“Tell me what I don’t know: AI-enhanced decisions in biomarker-informed trials”
12:20 PM, Monday February 12, Operationalizing Biomarker & Precision Medicine Trials track

where you’ll learn about deploying generative AI in drug development.

We’ll demonstrate how conversational AI empowers users to extract insights from sample and biomarker information. Additionally, we’ll discuss how predictive features of GAI may enable novel insights by proactively surfacing information instead of passively waiting for input.

Schedule a demo with our team

QuartzBio enterprise Biomarker Data Management webinar Sept 2023

Explore patient biomarker profiles across assays and vendors with a single solution

Duration: 30 minutes

Sign up to watch the webinar:

What you’ll learn:

Biomarkers, when used to guide clinical programs, could mean the difference between success and failure.

But exploratory biomarker data can be a headache to manage. Translational and data science teams struggle with disconnected data flows from specialty labs, sponsor data processing pipelines, and clinical data stores.

Join Bill Hall for a webinar demo of the QuartzBio^® enterprise Biomarker Data Management solution.

We’ll show you how to

Generate patient profiles to view tumor burden over course of treatment
Explore multi-marker views of patient profiles
Review ancillary data (e.g. images)
Evaluate patient profiles on a cohort level
Cross-reference biomarker measures across file types; e.g., compare ctDNA profiles of interest with clinical efficacy biomarkers such as immunohistochemistry

Who should attend: Translational Research teams, Biomarker Operations teams, Clinical/Biomarker Data Science teams, Clinical Development teams, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology teams, Office of the CIO/CTO, Data Management teams

Watch Now >>

QuartzBio Digitizing Biomarker Operations webinar June 2023

Duration: 30 minutes

Register to Join the Webinar:

Summary:

“Sample tracking and reconciliation are so much easier when all information around sample status, consent, and location are in one place.”
–Director of Biomarker Operations, QuartzBio Client Company N

Watch our webinar to learn how our clients, representing major biopharmas and biotechnology companies, have eliminated tedious data management processes and costly delays with the QuartzBio^® virtual Sample Inventory Management SaaS solution.

QuartzBio’s Adam Brown, PhD, demonstrates new capabilities of our technology, enabling teams to:

Track samples across every stage of their lifecycle with dynamic reports comparing actual and expected sample status
Proactively monitor sample stability and consent expiration with automated notifications
Quickly and accurately identify samples to ship for testing using intuitive Sample Ship List generator
Report on portfolio-level metrics and vendor and site performance across all clinical programs, including closed and active studies, to inform future planning

Adam also shows QuartzBio’s reimagined user interface*, which empowers teams to gain insights efficiently without requiring data expertise. Whether you are a current user or learning about the technology for the first time, you will learn new ways to immediately begin streamlining your work.

Register Now >>

*Current QuartzBio Users: Questions about when you can expect rollout of the new user interface for your account? Contact us!

The 22nd Annual Bio-IT World Conference and Expo comes to Boston, MA, USA May 16-18, bringing 2,500 attendees together to discuss data management, -omics technologies, data ecosystems, analytics, computing, and other topics impacting life sciences research and development.

QuartzBio’s Adam S. Brown, PhD, Senior Director of Product Support, will join experts from Washington University and Dana Farber Cancer Institute in a panel discussion,

“Towards Precision Medicine: Oncological Applications of Data Integration” | May 18, 2:40 PM ET

The panelists will share ideas for how to bring oncologists together with data integration leaders to systematically assess factors contributing to disease.

QuartzBio works with sponsors to eliminate data bottlenecks by deploying source-agnostic, portfolio-level solutions for managing data from any technology — ‘omics, immunophenotyping, imaging, and many more.

Sound like a solution that could benefit your team? Use the button below to schedule a 15-minute slot with us at the conference.

Meet QuartzBio at Bio-IT World

Duration: 30 minutes

Register to Watch Webinar On Demand:

Biomarker data can be time-consuming to clean and prepare for analysis, because assay results data files are often disconnected and have inconsistent formats.

This “data chaos” prevents translational, clinical, and bioinformatics teams from extracting insights to advance therapeutic development.

Join the webinar led by Adam Brown and Mike Waters, who will show how using a unified biomarker data management solution to acquire and process biomarker data, connected to clinical and sample data, empowers teams to break down data silos, creating an integrated data asset across the enterprise.

You’ll learn how the QuartzBio^® enterprise Biomarker Data Management solution enables teams to:

Systematically verify data quality, consistency, and availability with automated checks
Navigate and explore cleaned, annotated data at scale across your entire portfolio—whether a single program or hundreds of studies, at all phases of development
Link assay and clinical data across file types from any assay technology–transcriptomics, genomics, proteomics, flow cytometry, imaging, and more
Explore and visualize biomarker trends across cohorts, subjects, and timepoints and perform exploratory analyses to surface signals of interest
Integrate non-clinical/pre-clinical data to further enhance your data asset

During the presentation, the team will highlight how QuartzBio’s scalable data standardization and integration technology helps scientists shorten time from data acquisition to data insight and exploration of historically siloed data.

Register Now >>

Who should attend:
Translational Research teams, Biomarker Strategy teams, Clinical/Biomarker Data Science teams, Clinical Development teams, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology teams, Office of the CIO/CTO, Data Management teams

20230201 vSIM Webinar QuartzBio Clinical Sample Chaos On Demand

Duration: 30 minutes

Register to watch on demand:

Complex sample operations, disparate vendors, inconsistent metadata across labs are common challenges sponsors face when keeping track of samples across clinical programs.

Join our webinar to learn how sponsor teams are creating consistent, portfolio-level approaches for tracking sample status and location and uncovering insights into vendor/site/country-level performance.

Duration: 30 minutes

Register for the Webinar:

Translational and clinical research teams spend more than 70% of their time wrangling information from disconnected clinical trial data sets.

Data ends up in silos, making it hard to compile information and surface insights.

Watch this short webinar, where Adam Brown and Mike Waters will demonstrate how integrating exploratory biomarker, PK, and clinical data in a unified data platform enables teams to interrogate trends and identify insights as data is generated on-study.

Register for the Webinar:

Translational and clinical research teams spend more than 70% of their time wrangling information from disconnected clinical trial data sets.

Data ends up in silos, making it hard to compile information and surface insights.

Watch this short webinar, where Adam Brown and Mike Waters will demonstrate how integrating exploratory biomarker, PK, and clinical data in a unified data platform enables teams to interrogate trends and identify insights as data is generated on-study.