Pharmaceutical companies together with AWS to build the “innovation lab” of the future
A budget of 10 million dollars to support entrepreneurs and start-ups who will face the challenges of the healthcare industry.
As technology and cloud computing insiders know by now, Amazon Web Services has been working with healthcare providers, public health organizations, government agencies, and life sciences companies around the world to support their efforts to address the fallout from Covid-19.
Suffice it to say that in Italy alone Amazon and AWS have joined the Ministry of Innovation’s digital solidarity initiative by providing streaming lessons dedicated to so-called STEM subjects, i.e. science, technology, electronics and mathematics, and creative computer programming for primary and secondary school teachers. Not only that, AWS Cloud promotional credits have been provided to dozens of regional governments and local entities such as the Municipality of Cagliari, non-profit organizations, startups and companies, in order to enhance, during the emergency, their digital projects with remote work solutions and online collaboration environments.
But from Amazon Web Service they have proven to be very forward-looking. Just think of the great project of AWS together with the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Merck and Teva, in collaboration with the Biotech Fund that will build a laboratory for “digital health and computational biology” in Israel.
The project was selected by the
Israel Innovation Authority
and the local
Ministry of Digitalization
and will be supported with public funding of USD 9.9 million. The laboratory will be built at the Rehovot Science Park, home to the Weizmann Institute That is, one of the most important research centers in the world and one of the most prestigious Israeli universities entirely dedicated to scientific research. To understand the prestige of the institute, it is enough to know that several world-renowned personalities from the scientific world have received high awards there. These include Ada Yonath and Michael Levitt, Nobel laureates in chemistry in 2009 and 2012 respectively.
The budget for the computer lab is $10 million , and this amount, planned for the next five years, is made up of contributions from partner companies and the Israeli fund.
The aim will be to assist entrepreneurs and start-ups in dealing with the challenges of the healthcare industry.
In its official press release, the Israel Innovation Authority explained that “the rapid development of vaccines for the Covid-19 virus owes its success in part to the artificial intelligence capabilities of major pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and Moderna. These areas are expected to be more significant in the coming years”.
Yes, because today to fight against unknown viruses that, as Covid-19 did, bring the whole world to its knees, we have new technological resources that can make their great contribution.
This project is very ambitious and looks to the future. Suffice it to say that the Innovation Lab will help entrepreneurs have easier access to scientific knowledge and connect with world experts to develop revolutionary drugs and treatments.
“The purpose of the laboratory
is precisely to assist in the creation and advancement of new startups that develop innovative computational technologies based on artificial intelligence and aimed at discovering personalized treatments and solutions
,” the statement reads.
