2016 PharmaVoice 100 – The Technologists: Sam Anwar, eClinical Solutions

Sam Anwar

Title: VP, Engineering
Company: eClinical Solutions
Education: Engineering, Ain Shams University
Family: Wife, Inas Dawoud, who has been with him every step of the way; parents, whose hard work helped him to become the person he is today
Hobbies: Photography, playing soccer, swimming
Bucket List: Contribute to finding cures for untreated diseases; travel the world; travel to outer space (and hopefully make it back)

In Pursuit of Excellence

Whether he’s building innovative technical solutions or providing customer service, Sam Anwar goes above and beyond what’s expected.

A brilliant technologist with excellent software engineering and problem-solving skills, Mr. Anwar has been integral to the success of several innovative solutions that eClinical Solutions has delivered to help clients get insights into their data and make better decisions. His views on visual learning and how information is analyzed and used have made him a recognized leader in data visualization and analytic development.

Throughout his career, Mr. Anwar has left positive footprints. During his first job in the early 1990s, he invented a copy protection mechanism that prevented software distributed on floppy disks from being pirated, which saved his company a significant amount of money in lost revenue.
Later in his career, he built the complete suite of core software applications required to operate a clinical research organization and helped grow the company six-fold.

In his current position as VP, engineering at eClinical, Mr. Anwar has been the key resource behind the implementation and success of the company’s clinical data repository, elluminate. The platform allows clients to aggregate, standardize, and visualize clinical data, which enables them to quickly and thoroughly understand clinical data to hasten the submission process.

Mr. Anwar’s innovative approach is based on research that shows an improvement in the insights gained when people look at data visually as opposed to the traditional data listing. The brain identifies issues and anomalies in seconds compared with minutes/hours in the traditional method. The software he is responsible for designing aggregates clinical and operational data, across trials, and presents it visually to users.
There are no excuses any longer for the key asset, a sponsor’s data, not to be available at the fingertips of clinical researchers.

The key to elluminate lies in Mr. Anwar’s passion for going above and beyond to achieve breakthroughs and his innovative drive that spurs him to find simple solutions to complex problems.

Mr. Anwar is devoted to constantly improving the elluminate product and in supporting sponsor companies in their use of this analytic tool. His goal is to keep exploring and learning new technologies, and apply those technologies to advance the life sciences and continually improve the quality of human life.

Mr. Anwar is driven by a desire to help people in the life sciences do their jobs more effectively through technology and the use of their clinical data. If a client feels that a new feature or program is needed and valuable, he will build it and make it happen. In fact, it’s not uncommon for Mr. Anwar to stay up all night to achieve client goals in the pursuit of perfection.

“I love the people I work with and I love what I do,” he says. “I enjoy seeing the result of my work, whether it’s allowing a data manager to be more productive by providing him with an intuitive tool, or helping drug makers bring their product to market faster, it feels great. It makes the work day even more enjoyable.”

To Mr. Anwar, true success lies in working hard and looking beyond oneself to benefit others. He constantly keeps the patient in mind and has a selfless approach to everything.

He has an extraordinary relationship with his team where he serves as mentor, teacher, leader, and friend — a combination that is hard to find and achieve.

He helps each person he works with be more effective in their work with the end result of bringing much needed medicines to the market. He mentors junior staff on all aspects of how to deliver exceptional data service to clients, as well as assisting the most seasoned veterans in the industry with what works the best and how to improve efficiency and deliver the finest data service on even the most difficult projects.

He is a true craftsman who takes pride in his work, expects a high level of quality from his team, and helps them to achieve. The result is a group that constantly exceeds the expectations of clients.

“No innovation can grow in an unhealthy work environment,” he says.