Roche: Sustainable Operations, Supply Chains & AI in Health

With origins stretching back more than 125 years, Roche has evolved into one of the world's most significant biotech organisations and a frontrunner in in vitro diagnostics, offering pioneering solutions across key disease categories.

The organisation maintains a steadfast dedication to its patients, collaborators, workforce and stakeholders, fuelling its objective to progress scientific understanding and enhance healthcare accessibility worldwide. Through its dual capabilities in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics, Roche consistently generates substantial impact by enhancing patient outcomes.

Sustainability forms an integral part of Roche's heritage, values and day-to-day activities, steering the organisation as it develops groundbreaking medicines and diagnostic tools whilst generating enduring value for patients, communities and the planet.

According to the company, its strategic approach centres on three impact zones: broadening fair access to innovation, cultivating an equitable and prosperous workplace and safeguarding the environment.

Environmental and social considerations are woven throughout the complete product journey, from ethically sourcing natural materials to creating energy-conscious, recyclable packaging and responsibly managing products at their lifecycle conclusion.

The organisation has pledged to protect biodiversity, cut emissions and tackle climate change, targeting net zero carbon emissions by 2045 alongside objectives validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). Through comprehensive governance and climate risk oversight aligned with the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), Roche maintains ethical standards and transparency.

Transforming global laboratory supply chains

Roche has updated its worldwide laboratory supply chains by implementing Tecsys' cloud-based Elite platform across more than 1,000 labs in more than 50 countries, automating inventory oversight for reagents and consumables whilst connecting to its SAP backend for real-time visibility and restocking.

Peter Brereton, President and CEO at Tecsys, explains: "We are proud to support Roche in providing cutting-edge inventory management solutions to hospitals and laboratories around the world.

"Their trust in our solution is a testament to the transformative impact of modern supply chain technology."

The platform minimises manual mistakes, averts stock shortages and guarantees regulatory adherence, whilst facilitating swift deployment and scalable operations.

In territories including Nigeria, Roche has reinforced supply chains by transitioning to a direct buy-and-sell approach, eliminating intermediaries and mark-ups, enhancing cold chain oversight and equipping hospitals with infrastructure and education to preserve product quality.

"In 2020, one of the main problems we faced was having multiple levels of distribution," says Ladi Hameed, Country Manager, Roche Products Nigeria. "In Nigeria we would go from a main distributor to a sub-distributor to several sub-distributors before finally getting to the end user in the hospital or the patient.

"Every person in each stage of this complex distribution chain would add mark-ups of between 5% and 10% on the cost of these medicines. Secondly, there would be concern about the quality of the products because very often their cold chain would be a weak link.

"In 2020, they were paying a difference of between $200 and $500, month on month, for well-known breast cancer and blood cancer medicines."

All sustainability, net zero and sustainable supply chain leaders should attend:

• Sustainability LIVE: The Net Zero Summit - QEII Centre, London, March 4-5
• Sustainability LIVE: The US Summit - Navy Pier, Chicago, April 21-22

Co-located with Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE, these events brings together CSOs, ESG leaders and senior decision-makers at a moment when sustainability, supply chains and commercial performance are increasingly interconnected.

Tickets can be booked online today for The Net Zero Summit and The US Summit. Group discounts available.

Accelerating drug discovery through AI

To address time constraints, costs and elevated failure rates, Roche is harnessing AI and machine learning (ML) to revolutionise the drug discovery pathway.

Through Genentech's 'lab in a loop' methodology, experimental and clinical information is utilised to train AI models, which subsequently produce predictions for drug targets, therapeutic molecules and antibody configurations.

"The 'lab in a loop' is a mechanism by which you bring generative AI to drug discovery and development," says Aviv Regev, Head of Genentech Research and Early Development (gRED).

These predictions undergo laboratory testing, creating fresh data that continually refines model precision. AI and ML facilitate swift virtual screening of molecules, optimise cancer vaccine construction and support investigation of novel therapies.

By embedding AI into its research framework, Roche could deliver more effective treatments more rapidly, enhancing outcomes for patients across the world.