Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Accenture and Amazon Web Services, Inc. have entered into a five-year strategic agreement to accelerate Takeda’s digital transformation.

Not only will patients benefit from Takeda’s ability to respond with greater speed, agility, and insights across the value chain, but customers, employees, and partners will also benefit. This long-term collaboration will fuel Takeda’s cloud-driven business transformation by modernizing platforms, accelerating data services, establishing an internal engine for innovation, and equipping Takeda’s employees with new skills and ways of working.

“By combining the power of three organizations, Takeda is making a bold move to be at the intersection of human health, technology and business growth,” said Christophe Weber, Takeda president and chief executive officer. “My vision is that, in less than ten years, every Takeda employee will be empowered by an artificial intelligence assistant to help make better decisions, enabling us to deliver transformative therapies and better experiences to patients, physicians and payers faster than previously possible. Together, Accenture and AWS will propel Takeda further than we could alone to make this vision a reality.”

Taking a cloud-first technology approach will create a more scalable, reliable and secure architecture and eliminate unnecessary integration activities. By moving 80% of applications to the cloud, Takeda will remove non-differentiating technology, reduce its internal data centre footprint, and decrease capital expenditures.

“By leveraging the most comprehensive set of cloud services in the industry, innovators like Takeda can cut costs, time to insight and discovery, and improve patient experiences,” said Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of AWS. “The breadth and depth of AWS services enable Takeda to quickly and efficiently discover, develop, and manufacture therapeutics securely and compliantly. We’re excited to continue our work with Takeda as they innovate to deliver accessible and promising new therapies to save lives.”

Accelerating the delivery of data services and capabilities will help Takeda increase connectivity and collaboration with the life sciences ecosystem and external partners. For example, the collaboration has already helped Takeda harness the cloud to launch, in less than five days, a secure data sharing and clinical trial acceleration platform for the COVID R&D Alliance. Without the cloud, launching the platform would have taken up to three months.

In addition, the Plasma-Derived Therapies Business Unit, which develops critical, life-saving and life-sustaining therapies for patients with rare and complex diseases, is creating state-of-the-art, digitally-connected donation centres and modernizing the donor experience, optimizing the plasma collection process. Takeda’s plans to increase its plasma collection and manufacturing capacity by at least 65% by 2024 are geared towards expanding access to essential medicines and accelerating new treatments for patients.

"Takeda’s bold move to become a cloud-first company, 80% in the cloud, is a powerful example of how transformation benefits all – from accelerating therapies for patients, to empowering employees with new ways of working, creating new jobs, and upskilling people for the digital world, to the sustainability benefits of moving to the public cloud. We are proud to partner with Takeda and AWS to make this vision a reality at speed and scale," said Julie Sweet, chief executive officer, Accenture.

Over the next three years, Takeda anticipates creating hundreds of new jobs in specialized roles in emerging data and digital fields, accessing new talent pools, and upskilling thousands of employees to propel its data and digital capabilities.