The Impact of Serverless Technology on the Life Sciences Industry — Insights from Arrow Translation

At a recent developer conference, serverless technology once again emerged as a hot topic. This innovative approach is rapidly gaining traction, and more life sciences organizations are beginning to rely on the powerful cloud services available today. From NoSQL databases and cloud caching to service-oriented architectures and the highly discussed machine learning technologies, serverless applications are making their mark in all areas.

Serverless technology represents the latest fundamental shift in Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) capabilities. One conference attendee defined it as “a cloud-based application service that doesn’t require you to pay for the runtime of specific servers.” It’s not just a new pricing model; serverless technology represents a more granular way of paying for resources, shifting the focus from server uptime to computing resources like CPU cycles, memory, and network traffic.

Of course, servers are still there in the background, but they are spun up and down as needed. Typical examples include Amazon Web Services (AWS) Lambda and Microsoft Azure Functions. Similar innovations are also available as shared services, providing temporary slices of larger multi-tenant systems. For example, Azure’s Table Storage and many of Amazon’s messaging services, such as Simple Storage Service (S3), Simple Queue Service (SQS), and Simple Notification Service (SNS), are part of larger, more sophisticated machines.

What Does This Mean for the Life Sciences Industry?

As life sciences organizations increasingly adopt cloud technologies, they face numerous challenges. However, the industry’s unique needs should not be overlooked. Below are some key considerations for the life sciences sector when adopting serverless technology:

1. Security:

• Is the cloud provider’s security better than your own?
  How do you ensure your systems are protected and your software is patched in a timely manner to prevent data breaches or corruption, especially when it’s unclear which system is running your code?

2. Data Privacy:

• Where is your data stored?
  How do you ensure sensitive information remains secure? When data is automatically replicated across multiple regions, how do privacy laws and data management regulations apply?

3. Infrastructure and Operations:

• How do you create and test your cloud environment?
  Is testing your application in the cloud fundamentally different from traditional methods? As cloud providers take on more responsibilities, how can you ensure quality?

4. Software Quality:

• How do you test and validate the entire application?
  Once validated, how do you ensure it maintains quality, especially when its functionality belongs to a larger application that you don’t have complete control over?

5. Vendor Auditing:

• In this increasingly complex and interdependent software supply chain, how do you ensure the quality of vendors up and down the chain?
  What do you do if a vendor refuses to allow auditing of the services they use?

These questions are particularly challenging in life sciences IT and quality management, and serverless technology makes the discussion even more complex. Under this model, hardware doesn’t technically belong to either you or your vendor. If your vendor’s hosting environment is entirely serverless, the only asset you may “own” could be your database, even if it’s deployed on ElastiCache or DynamoDB, databases that may be distributed across multiple availability zones or regions, hardware you may not even control virtually.

If you are using Azure Functions with Azure Tables for service deployment, you are essentially using computing resources based on CPU cycles in a virtualized hardware environment that will never belong to you.

The Upside of Serverless Technology

Despite the challenges, serverless technology offers significant benefits. It allows companies to quickly complete tasks that once required an entire IT department or large consulting projects. For example, if you need to perform big data analysis on a dataset, simply call an API to trigger the relevant service. If you want to apply machine learning to a key business scenario, a developer can execute it independently. This is certainly an attractive feature for many organizations.

However, these issues in life sciences IT and quality management don’t have clear answers but are undoubtedly crucial. Despite the fact that responsibility ultimately lies with regulated companies, serverless computing continues to push the boundaries of risk. Sponsors and their vendors must make careful decisions when defining the development, hosting, and operation of application services.

Arrow Translation’s Role in the Life Sciences Industry

At Arrow Translation, we are dedicated to helping sponsors and Contract Research Organizations (CROs) optimize their electronic clinical processes. Whenever needed, we ensure that your eTMF (electronic Trial Master File) data and documentation remain secure, compliant, and always protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your services.

If you require translation services, we provide professional support to ensure that language barriers are never an obstacle in your cross-border operations. Our expertise ensures that your global communications are accurate, timely, and compliant, helping you navigate the complexities of international regulations and data privacy laws.

Conclusion

Serverless technology is revolutionizing many industries, including life sciences. While it brings significant opportunities, it also raises important questions regarding security, data privacy, and vendor relationships. Life sciences organizations must weigh the pros and cons of adopting such technology, particularly when it comes to regulatory requirements and the complexities of cloud environments.

At Arrow Translation, we stand ready to support life sciences organizations in overcoming these challenges, offering high-quality translation and localization services to ensure seamless global operations. Whether you are dealing with regulatory hurdles or the need to maintain quality standards across borders, we are here to ensure your language and documentation needs are met with precision and expertise.

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