Bio Farma and Google Cloud Indonesia Agree on the MoU for Cooperation in Healthcare Digital Transformation

The signing of Bio Farma's MoU with Google Cloud Indonesia, will be held on August 20, 2021 at Bio Farma. The signing was carried out by the President Director of Bio Farma, Honesti Basyir (second from left) accompanied by Bio Farma's Director of Transformation and Digital, Soleh Ayubi (second from right), and Megawati Khie (right), Country Director of Google Cloud Indonesia who was accompanied by Head of Enterprise and Corporate Sales, Deon Montasser (left), (Photo : Awang | Corporate Communication Bio Farma).

The parent holding of pharmaceutical SOEs, Bio Farma, together with Google Cloud Indonesia, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) today, Friday (20/8). The signing of this MoU was carried out at Bio Farma Bandung by the President Director of Bio Farma, Honesti Basyir who accompanied by Bio Farma's Director of Transformation and Digital, Soleh Ayubi, and Megawati Khie Country Director Google Cloud Indonesia, accompanied by Head of Enterprise and Corporate Sales, Deon Montasser.

This collaboration aims to support the digital transformation of Bio Farma as the Holding Holding for Pharmaceutical SOEs, including in the field of research & development of products such as vaccines and medicines and medical devices, through the competencies possessed by Google Cloud Indonesia. In the future, this MoU will not only be limited to Bio Farma, but can be extended to subsidiaries of Pharmaceutical SOE Holding such as Kimia Farma and Indofarma.

Through Google Cloud Indonesia, which will provide Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, and Software-as-a-Service services to support Bio Farma's digital transformation, and provide service solutions including, big data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), application modernization, developer tools, Application Programming Interface (API) management, collaboration and productivity applications, storage and databases, networking, management security and identity management, and infrastructure modernization.

This is in line with the direction of the Minister of SOEs, Erick Thohir, that Bio Farma must modernize its Information and Technology (IT) infrastructure and use IT to accelerate the time-to-market of all pharmaceutical SOE products.

"With this collaboration between Google Cloud and Bio Farma, it will accelerate the vaccine development revolution so as to help the Government, especially the Ministry of Health, in the success of the national vaccination program so that it can achieve vaccination targets more quickly. This is also in line with the digital transformation agenda in the health sector,” said Budi Gunadi Sadikin, Minister of Health of the Republic of Indonesia.

"Through artificial intelligence / machine learning technology, Bio Farma will be able to increase its capabilities in Research and Development of Bioinformatics, Modeling Drugs and Compounds, and others," said Soleh Ayubi.

He added that Bio Farma is ready to use Healthcare Related Products provided by Google Cloud which includes the exchange of health care data. Bio Farma will create ideas and implement digital transformations as well as accelerate product launches in the time to market market using Google Cloud Products. As part of the idea generation process, Bio Farma will hold a workshop with Google to discuss technological advances and the practice of adopting cloud technology in the healthcare and life sciences industry.

Currently, Bio Farma is in the process of implementing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technology to determine the optimal harvesting period for viruses and bacteria. As a Pilot Project, it will be implemented in the Polio Vaccine, Tetanus Vaccine, COVID-19 vaccine for BUMN. In the pharmaceutical world, the discovery of new health products such as life-science products including vaccines, drugs and medical devices, requires a relatively long time, especially at the clinical trial stage and requires time to collect empirical data for research that must be carried out systematically. carefully, this relates to the final product that will be consumed by the general public.

For example, with conventional methods, a new type of vaccine takes 10-15 years to be used by the community because there are several stages that must be passed such as clinical trials, stability data from the vaccine itself, etc. Utilizing information technology through collaboration with Google Cloud will make it easier for Bio Farma to collect data from various sources, such as clinical trials and research data.

"With this MOU, we can take advantage of data from Google ready to Machine Learning engines owned by Google to build R & D and healthcare related products that can support digital transformation and accelerate research and development of vaccines and drugs holding BUMN Pharmaceuticals, so that the research results can be a product and have the right time to market,” said Honesti.

With this Google Cloud technology, will help help the world of Healthcare Data Engine to make it easier for Healthcare and Life Sciences organizations to unify data silos to innovate and improve health outcomes.

Furthermore, Megawati Khie expressed the commitment of Google Cloud to cooperate with Bio Farma in accelerating digital transformation through the use of the advantages of Google Cloud technology in the fields of application development, smart analytics, AI/ML and collaboration. "We are also honored to be able to help Bio Farma to solve complex business and technology challenges, as well as accelerate their data-driven innovation, for the sake of Indonesia's health," he explained.