Big Data Program

Mission

Accelerate the development and adoption of data-driven innovation and standards to increase the speed and resilience of biopharmaceutical manufacturing.

Vision

Data-driven technologies optimize the productivity of biopharmaceutical manufacturing and accelerate the delivery of high-quality medicines to patients.

What Is Big Data and How Will It Benefit the Industry?

“Big Data” encompasses advanced uses of data and data-driven technologies that could transform the manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals and better meet the needs of biomanufacturers, suppliers, regulators, and patients. Benefits to and impacts on the industry include:

  • Process Design: Develop flexible systems, operations, and facilities for product design, manufacturing, and distribution
  • Manufacturing Operations: Optimize the efficiency and sustainability of manufacturing operations
  • Quality Operations: Ensure medicine quality and consistency
  • Supply Chain and Logistics: Improve product management and resilience across the supply chain; prevent and mitigate delays in manufacturing availability
  • Tech Transfer: Share essential product and process knowledge
  • Facilities and Engineering: Harmonize equipment and materials data from disparate sources of information

Big Data Program Structure

Workstreams

The work of the program is organized around workstreams—topical focus areas—and cross-cutting key capabilities themes. 

Data Structure and Management

Method of organizing and storing data within a computer system in a structures format to enable its future access, retrieval, and use.

Ontologies

A formal semantic model that represents a set of concepts and their relationships within a domain

Data Schema

A formal and logical data model which describes data content, structure, format and relationships for a bounded domain

Data Schema Consultant Project

NIIMBL Sponsored Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing Ontology Development Project

Open-Sourced Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing Ontology

Modeling and Simulation
Interoperability

The ability of different information systems, devices, and applications to access, exchange, integrate and cooperatively use data

Real-Time Data Connectivity

Systems which enable connectivity over many data sources, applications, and servers for immediate access to data as it is generated

Advanced Sensors

Soft sensors and other flexible monitoring systems that incorporate process knowledge to extrapolate beyond the dataset they were informed on

End to End Connectivity Consultant Project

Operationalizing Digital Twins in Biomanufacturing Through Interoperable Process Analytical Technology

Progress and updates

High-level program timeline

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March 2023

Convened NIIMBL Big Data Program Re-envision Workshop to develop a roadmap for the future of the Program 

2021 – 2022

Funded projects to advance standardization and contextualization, real-time control of critical quality attributes (CQAs), multivariate sensors and analytics, rich data generation, and bioprocess modeling and simulation

September 2019 - 2020:

Convened workshops to identify needs and opportunities, define priority workstreams, and plan first 2 years of the program 

Early 2019

Technical Activities Committee (TAC) prioritized Big Data as an area of focus; industry leaders and subject matter experts met at 2019 National Meeting to begin to define a program 

Program Participants

NIIMBL Program Leader

Roger Hart, Senior Fellow

Roger Hart

NIIMBL Senior Fellow

NIIMBL Scientific Project Managers

Dannielle Berlinghieri

Scientific Project Manager

Namrata Raman

Scientific Project Manager

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