Do you need an IT service or Cloud Solution? – talk to us, we’re here to help

MAKE AN ENQUIRY

IT Support services in Life Sciences

Since 2007, Greenlight Computers Ltd has successfully provided comprehensive IT support to Life Science companies throughout the UK.

Our technical staff are GxP compliant which enables them to demonstrate GLP (Good Lab Practice), GCP (Good Clinical Practice), GDP (Good Distribution Practice) and GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice).

Brain

Greenlight Computers Life Science client clusters

Whilst our geographical marks span across the UK, our major locations are situated in Alderley Park, Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst and The University of Manchester – each area containing onsite dedicated IT support staff. Greenlight is already developing full service facilities in Cambridge, Oxford and London.

UK Map 1

Greenlight Computers Ltd has four divisions within the group, to enable the delivery of a unique “single point of service” to those clients who wish to have thorough IT support as close to a corporate level service as possible on an SME budget.

Greenlight Computers

Established in 2006 provides IT infrastructure, cloud computing and application management outsourced services.

greenlight cyber logo

Offers protection consultancy and deployment, regulatory compliance services and cyber incident investigation and mitigation services.

NEW GL WEB Landscape on LightBgrnd RGB

A leading digital marketing agency with services including competitor benchmarking, brand creation, website development, email marketing social media & SEO/PPC services.

GL Telecoms NEW Landscape on LightBgrnd RGB

Provides unified communications including VOIP telephony and broadband connectivity.

How Greenlight Computers supports Life Science companies

Pharmaceuticals

Greenlight Computers relationship with pharmaceutical companies large and small is focused on the provision of IT support and cyber security. Greenlight is expert in the pharmaceutical industry Regulatory requirements. The CROs, CMOs, drug discoveries and biotechs we support are fully compliant with IT standards

towfiqu barbhuiya 9gj40P4jU0A unsplash

IT and cyber security audit response and compliance consultative services can be the difference between winning and losing a key contract. Greenlight Computers has the industry knowledge to solve any identified gaps and ensure our clients can be a secure part of the supply chain.

Biotechnology, Therapeutics and Drug Discovery

Early-stage drug development through to clinical trial has largely shifted to the SME life science companies over the past decade. Large pharma has often outsourced the drug discovery to clinical research phases of the lifecycle, shown below, to lower cost and accelerate treatment development. More “fleet of foot” teams work on the early stages and are the assets acquired by pharmaceutical companies during or post clinical trial.

Summary steps of the drug discovery life cycle:

1. Discovery and formulation development

2. Pre-clinical research in-vitro, in-vivo and ex-vivo testing

3. Clinical Development, phase I, phase II and phase III testing

4. MHRA, EMEA and FDA review

5. Systems approved for compliance with Regulatory post approval monitoring and data gathering requirements

Greenlight Computers works with the drug discovery SME from day 1, providing baseline IT, design and deployment services to establish all IT tools.

AdobeStock 176821177

With the full drug development life cycle often carrying costs of $1billion, well managed, cyber secure and scalable IT can often become a great differentiator. Greenlight Computers technical staff work with clients in biotechnology to ensure data segregation, raw data validation, backup and disaster recovery solutions are all established from the beginning. Future proofing the storage of trial data onto a technology platform for up to 25 years is essential to the efficacy and future value of the drug discovery business.

Medical Devices

Across the world the CE mark is recognised and accepted by Regulatory Authorities. Greenlight Computers is experienced in working in this regulated environment. The MHRA regulates the introduction and conformity of medical devices in the UK and have introduced a new product mark UKCA for devices in Great Britain (England, Scotland & Wales) which also covers in-vitro diagnostic devices.

These changes are being reflected in the data management requirements of medical device companies. The use of flexible IT solutions is enabling Greenlight Computers clients to manage any change of data flows or storage and backup changes without concern.

CRO/CMO

Contract research companies (CROs), contract manufacturing companies (CMOs) and, contract development and manufacturing companies (CDMOs) play a critical role in supporting pharmaceutical drug discovery, drug development, biotech and medical devices industries. They allow scientists to research, test, refine, manufacture, and market products and services

There are estimated to be between 1,500 and 2,000 CROs in the UK alone, although not definitive, Contract Research Map demonstrates the scale of the industry

https://www.contractresearchmap.com/places/united-kingdom

Two

Data management, the retention of confidential information, patient records, and documents is essential to CRO’s, CMO’s and CDMO’s across a wide range of multinational and ever changing Regulatory environments.

Greenlight Computers provides the consultancy service to design the ideal data architecture for the storage, access control and collaboration with partners whilst remaining GDPR compliant.

Cyber security

Large amounts of sensitive information are held by Life Science companies including: patient data, clinicial trial data, IP data and more. This requires a vital need for the highest level of cyber security to prevent data breaches.

GreenlightWEB CYBERbanner2 1024x278 1

Greenlight Computers recently commissioned a cyber security research project with the UK Cyber Foundry and four North West Universities (University of Manchester, MMU, University of Salford & Lancaster University). The study looked at best practice cyber security for the Life Science sector by taking the requirements of large pharma, ISO27001, Cyber Essentials Plus and leading cyber insurers to create an ideal set of protections. The study then compared that ideal set to the cyber toolset deployed by Greenlight Computers and the leading cyber protection products on the market.

The outputs of this study were then consolidated into a comprehensive checklist uniquely available to Greenlight Computers and its clients. Each client situation may be different, but the principles of cyber security are largely the same, the Greenlight Computers checklist and toolset can offer the optimum cyber security for any Life Science company.

Greenlight Computers range of services for our Life Science clients

IT Support Services

  • Network Services (Cabling/Switching/Routing/WIFI)
  • IT Transformation (Office Moves/Mergers/Acquisitions)
  • Computing Solutions (Servers/Virtualisation/Storage/PC’s/Laptops)
  • Cloud Solutions (System Maintenance/Software Subscription/Data Backup)
  • Application Services (Selection/Integration/Support/Development)
  • Big Data Management (Co-Location/Azure/AWS/Broadberry/PB+)
  • Emerging Technologies (AI/Blockchain/Internet of Things)

If you require IT support services please contact us here

Cyber Security

  • Cyber Investigation (Digital Forensics/First Hour Response/Incident Response/Insurance Reporting)
  • Cyber Compliance (Vulnerability Testing/Cyber Essentials Plus/ISO27001/Policies/Audit/Outsourced DPO)

If you require cyber security services please contact us here

Unified Communications

  • VOIP Telephony (Cloud Hosted Telephony ideal for Multi-Site Operations & WFH)
  • Broadband Services (Fibre/Leased/Line/MPLS)
  • Conferencing Solutions (Voice/Audio-Visual/Virtual)

If you require telecommunication services please contact us here

Digital Marketing Agency

  • Brand Design & Print (Logo/Digital/Video/Stationary/Promotional)
  • Website Design & Development (WordPress/Magento/Shopify/PHP/UI-UX) Domains & Hosting (Register/Host/Backup/Caching/SSL Protect)
  • Website Maintenance & Support (Regular Maintenance/Helpdesk/Content Update/Performance Reporting)
  • Email Marketing (Template Design/List Admin/Safe Send/Analytics)
  • SEO – Webmaster Services (Lead Generation/Google Ranking/On Page/Off Page/PPC/Content Copywriting)
  • Social Media Management (LinkedIN/Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/YouTube)
  • Digital Marketing Benchmarking (KPI comparison with key Competitors)

If you require digital marketing services please contact us here

Life Science IT solutions

The Greenlight Computers team brings together IT knowledge, IT expertise, considerable experience, and understands the needs of the life science sector. Greenlight Computers provide IT solutions that enable clients to operate and grow securely to achieve their business aims. This can range from single person organisations to companies that employ hundreds of people. Greenlight is proud to support life science from discovery, through pre-clinical and clinical development and beyond

Segregated networks for lab and office data

There are many great IT companies in the UK, but very few who specialise in the Life Sciences sector; however, Greenlight Computers has been successfully doing so since 2007. Network segregation has become an essential part of most life science companies IT infrastructure set up.

Creating separate network VLAN’s & WIFI SSID’s for differing user groups and functions is core to the cyber protection of life science datasets. The typical life science SME will require a minimum of three distinct network zones:

  1. Office staff network – used to access internal company data.
  2. Lab network – used to run lab operations, often with restricted internet access.
  3. Guest network – for visiting users, contractors & non-work device internet access.

In addition, the Lab network may be split into two with temperature monitoring technologies often requiring dedicated network ports or separate VLAN’s.

Cloud

Cloud based solutions for life sciences

The key to using cloud technologies effectively for a modern life science company is exceptional planning of your data architecture. Greenlight Computers consultants specialise in helping clients model their datasets to enable flexible working, Regulatory conformance and maximise the cyber protections.

Whether your presented challenge is big data storage, maximizing compute speed or secure collaboration the Greenlight Computers team have potential solutions.

Cloud computing can be transformational to a life science organization enabling home working, multi-site operations and potentially reducing the drug development life cycle.

Lab informatics

Technology compatibility is an essential knowledge base as clients bring strategic scientific equipment into the lab. We work with our clients to streamline processes and integrate new equipment into existing networks or extending networks to expand the labs capacity.

shutterstock 92065760

The Greenlight Computers team will consult at the early stages of the process to help select compatible solutions and work with vendors to integrate into the network. As the definition of images or the volume of statistical outputs creates larger data sets, often running into terabytes, we will plan and source expandable storage and backup solutions. Selecting the right LIMS (Lab Informatics Management System), QMS (Quality Management System) or any other key IT platform will require careful planning and integration to transform the way your business operates. IT systems are rarely standalone, the network integration expertise engaged early on, will save money and time in the long run.

Top 10 Regular IT issues in Life Science companies

On behalf of clients Greenlight Computers manages and mitigates against these potential issues regularly. We have highlighted some of those in this top 10:

  1. Corrupt or lost data – robust backup and recovery are essential. Users make mistakes so having a secure backup is called on to recover files/folders/versions.
  2. Cyber-attack – common targets for spoofing/phishing attacks as life science companies are considered a wealthy sector
  3. Big data storage – on premise V cloud storage and replication, costs vary widely.
  4. Network segregation of out of support devices in the lab – lab equipment IT often relies on old operating systems e.g. Win XP or 7, which need segregating away from the internet to maintain security for the company.
  5. Validation of IT changes in the GLP/GCP environment – change management is an essential element of QA often involving input from IT.
  6. Integration of new technologies – the cost of integration can often overshadow the initial outlay, planning is essential.
  7. Microsoft Teams proliferation – users control access and invite external 3rd parties into Teams, the cyber safety of the 3rd party device can present new risks
  8. Secure VPN – when operating from home, shared locations etc. accessing company data needs to be secure and multi-factor authenticated
  9. User awareness – keeping users vigilant about cyber safe computer use
  10. Stable Broadband – becoming a common issue in many locations but essential to the movement of Raw Data in the lab or temperature monitoring 24/7

IT under pins every Life Science company. Subsequently, weaknesses in tools and processes can present serious risks to operational viability. Preventing and mitigating against risks needs to be of high priority for any company.

Please contact us at the Greenlight Computers team for confidential advice if you have concerns, do not wait until the “horse has bolted”.

Glossary of terms

MHRA – UK government agency to regulate medicines and healthcare products

CRO – Contract research organisation

CMO – Contract manufacturing organisation

CDMO – Contract development and manufacturing organisation

EMEA – European Medicines Evaluation Agency

FDA – US Food and Drug administration, responsible for protecting public health

GDPR – UK general data protection regulation

HIPAA – US Health insurance portability and accountability act 1996

IN-VIVO – Preclinical research with new drugs conducted in mice and rats as example

IN-VITRO – Conducted within a laboratory

EX -VIVO – Using animal cells and/or tissues from a non-living animal

PHASE I – Healthy volunteers selected < 100 patients

PHASE II – Testing in small quantity of patients 100-150 patients

PHASE III – Testing conducted in large quantities of patients 1,000 – 5,000 patients

ISO27001 – Information security framework to minimise an organisations risk

QA – Quality Assurance the systematic process for validation

VLAN – Virtual local area network is used to limit access to a specified group of devices

LIMS – Lab Informatics Management System

QMS – Quality Management System

GLP – Good lab practice certified by MHRA

GCP – Good clinical practice certified by MHRA

GDP – Good distribution practice certified by MHRA

GMP – Good manufacturing practice certified by MHRA

GxP – Often used to denote good IT/data practice in association with GLP or GCP facilities.

Contact Us