Virtusa Announces Cognitive Adverse Event Case Processing for Pharmacovigilance Operations

Virtusa Corporation, the business consulting and IT outsourcing company, announced the launch of its latest pharmacovigilance (PV) solution for Adverse Event (AE) Intake and Cognitive Adverse Event Case Processing (AECP). Built on pharmacovigilance and case management technology from Pegasystems, the solution enables life sciences companies to increase productivity while ensuring compliance, lowering costs, and enhancing patient safety.

“The demand for digitization and increased automation in PV intake and AECP is driven by inefficient systems, redundant processes, and a lack of digital automation,” said Dan DiSantis, senior director of Healthcare and Life Sciences at Virtusa. “The applications Virtusa has built leverage decisioning solutions from our global partner, Pegasystems, to create a configurable, reusable AE case processing and product compliance environment, saving millions over the current processes.”

Leveraging deep industry knowledge, extensive experience with life sciences companies, and strong expertise in Pega Platform, the underlying Pega technology that powers Pega Pharmacovigilance and case management, Virtusa expects the AECP solution to:

Increase productivity and lower costs of overall PV operations by 50-80%

Provide more reliable and faster detection of AEs for safer use of drugs and devices

Reduce manual efforts for lower per case processing costs

Enhance functionality for existing safety system investments without major upgrades

Improve accommodation of rapidly rising AE case volumes and new channels and sources

Virtusa enables pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers to streamline PV intake and AE case processing to address product, region, or regulatory requirements with these key features:

• Omni-channel and user-centered design supports direct intake from any channel including E2B R2/R3, web, e-mail, fax, and social media
• Automated case intake with integrated Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP)
• Automated triage, identification, and classification of AEs
• Expanded PV case and process management for faster assessment of AEs
• Built-in support for industry standards including E2B R2/R3, MedDRA, IDMP, and WHODrug
• Expanded visibility and compliance through integrated audit trails, reporting, and dashboards
• Leverage and enhance existing legacy PV applications, like Argus and ArisGlobal, as well as integrate with other data sources by applying Pega’s unifying technology

“Life sciences organizations are in need of technology solutions that help them scale in the face of ever-growing case volumes,” said Ed Chase, director, life sciences, Pegasystems. “Built on industry thought leadership and technology expertise, the PV Intake/Cognitive AECP solution provides innovative end-to-end automation for adverse events case processing, well beyond those of traditional PV safety systems. It empowers life sciences companies to capture and process adverse events faster, saving valuable time, reducing overall operational costs, and most importantly - improving patient safety.”

Virtusa’s Healthcare group has received numerous analyst and industry recognitions including recognition in Everest Group’s Performance, Experience, Ability, Knowledge (PEAK) Matrix for both its Healthcare Provider IT Services and Healthcare Payer Big Data and Analytics IT Services. Virtusa was also the recipient of Frost & Sullivan’s 2014 Global System Integration in Healthcare Product Line Strategy Leadership Award. The company was recently recognized as a leader among BPM service providers by analyst firm Forrester Research in The Forrester Wave: BPM Service Providers, Q4 2016.