Empowering Data Analytics: Unleashing the Potential of Machine Learning and AI

In today's data-driven world, businesses are constantly seeking innovative ways to leverage the vast amounts of information they collect. Traditional data analytics tools are often limited in their ability to extract meaningful insights from complex datasets. However, the integration of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in data analytics platforms has proven to be a game-changer. I spoke to Ashish Vikram Singh, Principal, Software Engineering, R&D at Axtria, to delve into the exciting realm of ML and AI-powered data analytics.

Tailored Analytics Solutions for Life Sciences and Healthcare

Axtria's platforms, Axtria DataMAx™, and Axtria InsightsMAx™, offer a range of algorithms and models to analyze large datasets, identify patterns and trends, and generate predictive insights. Their machine learning and AI capabilities include predictive modeling, natural language processing (NLP), recommendation engines, and automated analytics. These platforms also provide robust analytical deployment and operations (ML ops) for production use.

Ensuring Data Security and Privacy for Clients

At Axtria, we have implemented a comprehensive defense strategy that prioritizes security at multiple layers. Our strong security controls ensure the protection of data both at rest and in transit, enabling us to meet the highest international requirements.

Recognizing the critical importance of data and internet security, we invest in keeping our security experts equipped with the latest tools and processes, not just at the enterprise level but also at an individual skill level. Axtria Infosec actively conducts phishing simulations and internal audits, following NIST and industry best practices, to ensure governance, risk management, and compliance related to security and privacy. These measures encompass technical and procedural aspects.

In addition to internal audits, we engage independent third-party auditors to conduct external audits for the following certifications:

• SOC2 type- II accreditations- Axtria undergoes rigorous testing of stringent controls defined by three applicable trust service criteria - processing integrity, confidentiality, and security.
• ISO 27001 certification - Internationally accredited information security management standard.
• ISO 27701 is an extension of the ISO27001 (security) standard, providing guidelines for implementing and maintaining Privacy Information Management Systems (PIMS).

These measures include secure infrastructure, data encryption, data segregation, access controls, and compliance with industry-specific security and privacy standards.

Overcoming Technical Obstacles in Complex Projects

Axtria's range of products and platforms have a significant impact on various stages of the life sciences industry's commercial value chain. They contribute to critical decision-making processes such as formulating brand strategies, allocating budgets within marketing-mix models, ensuring sales teams are in sync, and facilitating timely and accurate payment of incentives to sales representatives. Our solutions also excel in orchestrating execution across multiple channels and monitoring brand performance. In the previous year alone, our incentive compensation module successfully managed billions of dollars in payouts and effectively aligned over 60,000 representatives across our client base. This demonstrates the level of complexity we address and incorporates into our product designs.

Ensuring Scalability and Handling Large Data Volumes

Axtria’s products and platforms provide value in the commercial value chain of the life sciences industry by providing rapid, personalized, actionable insights. This entails that scalability and big data (variety and volume) processing is at the heart of the architecture and design of our platforms.

For example, one of our products, Axtria DataMAx™, is the next-generation global cloud-based commercial life sciences data management product enabling accelerated, actionable business insights from trusted data. Companies can focus on long-term cost saving, achieving speed and scale in their business functions and product launches.

Empowered by an extensive data framework, the product utilizes a metadata architecture to ingest data from disparate sources, allowing a multitude of data management functions:
• Data validation and data quality management
• Data integration and interlinking between disparate commercial sources
• Data governance structure for segregation of redundancy and accessibility of information

Our industry-focused products are built with cutting-edge technology, ensuring they are cloud-native and optimized for efficiency. We prioritize a modular architecture that divides responsibilities among components, allowing each part to easily scale according to demand. Scalability is a fundamental aspect of our development process, and we rigorously test it by simulating extensive user scenarios and executing data processing tasks on a massive scale.

To achieve scalability, we employ various techniques such as distributed computing, cloud-based infrastructure, parallel processing, data partitioning, performance testing, and continuous monitoring. By emphasizing these areas, we develop software solutions that can handle substantial data volumes while maintaining exceptional performance.

Ensuring High-Quality Solutions through Agile Development

It is a commonly cited fact that more than 50% of the features in digital products that are developed are never utilized, and more than 50% of these products ultimately fail. The reasons for this are not difficult to understand - either the products were not designed to address a relevant problem, whether stated or unstated (indicating poor quality in the product discovery phase), or they were not built correctly (indicating poor quality in the product development phase).

At Axtria, we adopt an agile development process and utilize appropriate tools, with a strong emphasis on achieving a "validated discovery" and ensuring high-quality product development at every stage. We prioritize quality processes that detect defects as early as possible, employing several mechanisms for "validated discovery."

Firstly, we have robust product management and user experience teams that include user researchers. They employ a combination of qualitative ethnographic techniques and data-driven quantitative analysis to determine what features should be built.

Secondly, we have established "charter customer programs" where we engage customers as partners in the product development and validation journey right from the conceptualization stage.

Throughout the development process, we perform quality assurance activities to ensure that the solution meets the client's requirements and maintains high quality. We utilize static analysis code quality tools, thorough unit test coverage, and automated test suites integrated with deployment builds. This allows us to conduct efficient yet comprehensive automated testing for every line of code change. Additionally, we have made substantial investments in top-tier security testing tools and processes. This includes threat modeling during the design stage, security tests at each step, third-party vulnerability assessments, and quality assurance for performance and scalability.

Once the solution successfully passes quality assurance testing, it is deployed to production, and we provide ongoing maintenance and support. We adhere to various best practices, such as code reviews, automated testing, continuous integration and delivery, quality assurance, and user acceptance testing, to ensure the quality of our solutions. The development processes at Axtria prioritize collaboration, communication, and quality assurance in order to deliver high-quality solutions that fulfill our clients' needs.