Why does medicine need clouds?

Today we would like to tell you about one of our clients – the BIONICA Group of Companies. BIONICA makes a significant contribution to the development of medicine in Russia: it is actively involved in educational activities, helps specialists meet and exchange experiences at conferences and seminars, publishes many thematic professional magazines and much more. We talked with Dmitry Ponomarev, IT Director of the BIONICA Group of Companies, and found out how sanctions have affected the medical field, what technical difficulties the Group faces and how cloud technologies help out.

About the BIONICA group of companies

The origins of the company's development are traced back to its founder and promoter Yuri Krestinsky, who in 1992 began working in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry as the head of one of the first distribution companies in the Russian Federation.

In 1993, the all-Russian weekly newspaper “Pharmaceutical Bulletin” was founded, which is still being published. Yuri Krestinsky has headed the editorial board since its foundation. From 1993 to 2003, the publication implemented a range of projects in the publishing, advertising and communications, recruiting and analytical spheres, united within the framework of the Bionika Group of Companies, created under his leadership.

The portfolio of the publishing house “Bionika Media” includes more than 15 professional printed publications and 2 Internet portals: Pharmvestnik.ru And Medvestnik.ruThe Bionika Group also includes the congress operator KST Group, which conducts medical and pharmaceutical scientific and practical events. The RX Code communications agency is a company specializing in the promotion of drugs and medical products.

In 2017, the Group was expanded by the analytical company AlphaRM, which provides access to analytical databases for all segments of the Russian pharmaceutical market and also implements various types of marketing research in the industry.

In addition to leading the Group, Yuri Krestinsky is actively involved in public activities as part of various professional associations and expert commissions, as well as committees under federal and regional legislative and executive authorities.

Interview with Dmitry Ponomarev

Are there any cases where your projects directly helped people or the medical industry as a whole?

In fact, all BIONIKA Group businesses are based on helping people. As much as we can, we contribute to the development of the medical industry, which is needed specifically to treat people. The sale of medical drugs, their promotion, the work of the publishing house (and these are magazines that form an audience of doctors, give them information about the latest developments, drugs, diseases and their treatment) – all this is a huge contribution to domestic medicine. This is information filling of the industry from completely different sides. Each of the Group's businesses is aimed specifically at helping people.

The value of the Group is that it concerns the most diverse areas of knowledge in the field of medicine, specialization of doctors, and also pharmaceuticals. It is a whole conglomerate that covers the entire medical industry. This is a virtually unique solution.

What was your most interesting, memorable project?

Basically, everything is now connected with IT – this is our digital age. I will tell you about our project, within the framework of which we created a database of doctors. With its help, you can get information about specialists from various data providers.

One of such large suppliers is the company “Pro Doctorov”, which maintains statistics on a huge number of clinics, specific doctors, their ratings. This data is processed in a centralized database, which maintains the relevance of the data. From the database, you can always find out exactly which doctor works where, what is his rating and experience. In other words, our project combines data on all doctors in the Russian Federation, knows about all clinics, hospitals. And we can centrally process this data and provide it upon request.

This is a really big project with a Database of millions of records, it unites many information providers. We made this Doctors Database together with AlphaRM.

With such a large amount of data, there was a need to store, process, and verify it. As a result, all this led to the construction of a large architecture with the ability to work with it online. So it was a fairly complex project in terms of technical implementation and architectural solutions.

Which of your services are most in demand and why?

One of the most important and popular services is direct communication with the doctor, be it in person or by sending the necessary materials (of course, if his consent is received). Our doctor can be on several platforms at once, which significantly complicates communication with him. Therefore, having brought together all the information received from these disparate sources, we are currently creating a single unique record, the so-called Golden Record. We have made significant progress in this direction and hope that in some time we will have exceptional, I would say, exclusive information on doctors.

Since we have a lot of information suppliers, we can see what information is most interesting to this doctor, what section of medicine interests him, what channel of interaction with him is most convenient and in demand. Accordingly, by analyzing a large amount of data, we can offer companies that distribute drugs, data on doctors (again, with their consent). To make communication between the manufacturer and the doctor most effective in terms of channels and methods of interaction.

Our digital services, which provide the opportunity to receive information about doctors and certain analytics on them, are also in demand.

Promotion-related services are also popular. Pharmaceutical companies spend huge budgets on promoting their drugs, and choosing the most effective channels is important to them. This is difficult. And since promotion services in the medical field are very expensive, means that can determine the most effective directions, saving the budget, are worth their weight in gold for pharmaceutical companies.

Medicine is always about the security of personal data. How difficult is it to ensure its safety?

It is difficult. In fact, ensuring data security is a very difficult issue that requires a comprehensive approach. Because the perimeter is large, which can potentially have many leakage channels. It is necessary to maintain the security of communication channels and the relevance of the software that services these databases, because vulnerabilities are regularly found in operating systems, databases, and software that, for example, works on the Internet. Accordingly, it is important to ensure security at different levels, taking into account the requirements of the law. Fortunately, we do not process special, “closed” medical information, which is a specially protected type of personal data. But the personal data of doctors, such as their full name, specialization, phone numbers, email are also subject to careful protection.

So, yes, it is difficult to ensure safety, it requires constant work. You need to be on trend, track errors, any possible leakage channels. All this is difficult, but necessary.

How do you think modern technology can make society healthier (in a medical sense)?

Here, a very interesting, borderline aspect arises, which lies between medicine, biotechnology and IT. We all know very well what DNA is. We understand that DNA is a certain set of data. It is not digital, but rather analog, but still has some relation to encoding. So, in my opinion, modern technologies will develop more with the development of the IT sphere. In particular, when we can process large volumes of data, because DNA is a storehouse of information. I think methods will appear that allow targeted changes in nucleotide sequences in DNA. This will lead to the creation of tools, not drugs per se, but methods that allow you to influence the body, a certain area, very precisely.

Why are digital technologies so important here? Because these variations of nucleotides in DNA need to be able to be accumulated and processed, and some analytics obtained from there. How certain changes in DNA lead to certain local or global changes in the body or some part of it.

The development of biochemical methods of action, DNA analysis and digital methods will in the future lead to other, new ways of treating, for example, cancer.

How have sanctions affected medicine and pharmacology in Russia? Are domestic contractors able to replace the departed players, has domestic medicine begun to develop better?

Yes, the sanctions had a serious impact. If we talk about our company, we, among other things, are engaged in the promotion of drugs and are dependent on marketing budgets. Many foreign companies have now either left the market or significantly reduced these very budgets for advertising their brands in the Russian Federation.

This has led to a certain decrease in the share of revenue. Fortunately, it is not critical, but it forces businesses to change something, look for new products, new ways of promotion, to ensure the successful development of the business.

We are currently transforming our business to compensate for the decrease in advertising budgets. So, yes, the sanctions have affected even us, although we are more of a digital marketing company, which is related to medicine. Nevertheless, we feel a certain level of tension.

Are domestic contractors capable of replacing the departed players?

In Russia, we have certain problems with the production culture, which is expressed in the purity of formulas, the purity of products.

Our contractors are capable of replacing the players who have left, but in the medium term it is very difficult because there are certain problems with the production of high-tech drugs that require a high degree of purification. This is due not only to the production culture, but also to the quality of materials, the quality of equipment.

In general, domestic production is slightly behind the large German or Swiss giants in terms of technology. Therefore, we have to catch up. I know that new pharmaceutical production facilities are opening, new devices are being developed.

What growth opportunities do you see in the current environment?

Due to the departure of a number of foreign companies from the Russian market, those very growth opportunities have appeared – offering customers products that are an alternative, and sometimes even a better alternative to foreign analogues. We are working on this, these products are being created, these growth opportunities are being used. In particular, by AlphaRM, which offers a variety of digital analytical services.

There is also the development of new products, for example, the previously mentioned Golden Record: you have huge sources of information about the same doctors that need to be combined into one, making a unique record. There are no similar analogues on the market.

In fact, we are talking about both replacing the players who left and developing our own products. There are naturally growth opportunities, because digital services are in demand and will be in demand more and more in the future. And funding, of course, after the introduction of sanctions, has shifted to domestic production and businesses. Indeed, we are investing in our own, we are developing our technologies and our services.

There are a number of digital products that have left us. In particular, BI analytics, which was developed by foreign giants, including Microsoft. Now the BI analytics market in Russia has become free, and these services are in great demand, which we also want to take advantage of. Developing our own products is extremely important now.

How can cloud technologies help?

Deploying your own large infrastructure in the office is, of course, very expensive. We, in particular, use rent. For example, we have our own platform at Cloud4Y, it is certified and protected in terms of personal data processing. The Golden Record project is deployed there, since it offers large capacities, a good fault-tolerant certified structure. Of course, it is easier for us not to reinvent the wheel, but to use a ready-made service provided by Cloud4Y. Cloud technologies are fault tolerance, security and performance, which not everyone can afford. But a cloud provider can provide them. This is very important.

What technological challenges most often arise in your work?

Together with Cloud4Y, we have encountered attacks on our infrastructure and services. That is, attackers, having information on vulnerabilities or simply using DDoS, block work, destroy or encrypt data. Technological difficulties are protection from such attacks, data backup, finding ways to quickly restore. In other words, counteracting attackers.

We know that the geography of such attacks is vast, and the Western companies that supply software themselves know about their vulnerabilities. This is a very bad point for hacking, especially if this information about vulnerabilities becomes available to attackers.

This is a really serious technological challenge because you don’t expect from which side the attack will come, where it can be hacked, what data and how it can be damaged.

The second point, of course, concerns resources. Although I would not say that this is exactly a problem. Yes, a large number of resources are required, rapid scaling, but here cooperation with Cloud4Y helps us. If necessary, we always receive the necessary additional resources.

How do Cloud4Y cloud services help you solve your work tasks? How did they cope before us, what did you not like, what was missing?

Cloud4Y gives us a reliable flexible infrastructure, which allows us to use new servers and new capacities if necessary. In addition, we have already talked about protection from attacks, this is also an important point.

Next, data safety. We get a good backup system. It is independent from the main virtualization system, so if any failures occur, we always know that we can rely on the backup copy. It is stored at Cloud4Y, which means that we will definitely restore our data.

The third point is fault tolerance. Cloud infrastructure is quite reliable, there are always alternative communication channels. For example, we cannot afford to have several Internet providers in the office, it is very expensive, and Cloud4Y has such fault tolerance. Therefore, when we place mail services, web services in the cloud space, we know that it will work reliably and smoothly.

This is what we lacked before. Reliability in terms of infrastructure, which is very difficult to provide on your own. Sometimes almost impossible. A cloud provider allows you to solve these problems completely calmly.

How did you cope with this before?

There was our own internet channel, or rather two. We used our own equipment to balance these channels. We organized the structure in such a way that if one communication channel failed, the web service would switch to another.

There was a local infrastructure, its own services. They require a full-time engineer for support, constant monitoring, etc. When all this is transferred to the provider, you do not think about it, but deal with your target tasks. Infrastructure problems are for professionals. The provider solves this.

That’s probably why it wasn’t the fault tolerance that was satisfactory, and the cloud provider helps a lot with this.

What are your plans for the development and prospects of BIONIKA Group?

In principle, I have already briefly touched on this. Refining existing products, as well as creating and developing fundamentally new, sometimes exclusive ones – this is the main task for the near future. And returning to where the interview began, the end result is helping specialists working in the field of medicine and pharmacy, as well as patients, in quickly finding the necessary information.