Berg_Logo Site navigation ABOUT US RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS MEDIA CAREERS CONTACT Search Media News Exclusive: Berg Health, Microsoft partner on cloud-based bioanalysis tool MEDIA All News features Press releases Events Media Kit EXCLUSIVE: BERG HEALTH, MICROSOFT PARTNER ON CLOUD-BASED BIOANALYSIS TOOL SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 By Rowan Walrath – Life Sciences Reporter, Boston Business Journal With just one partnership, Framingham bioanalytics firm Berg Health LLC is going from a small Massachusetts company to a global firm. At least, that’s how CEO and co-founder Niven Narain sees it. His company has just signed a first-ofits- kind partnership with Microsoft to integrate its bioanalytics tool, Interrogative Biology, with Azure, the tech giant’s cloud-computing platform. The two companies will begin offering Interrogative Biology and Azure to customers as a single package to enable fast remote analytics for biotech and pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, hospital systems, insurance companies and governments. “The entry point of the data can be either in Boston or elsewhere in the world, and the analysis is unified within the Azure environment,” Narain said. “Delivery of insights and data, whether it’s delivering data back to a partner around the world or they’re delivering data to Berg so we can analyze it, becomes so much more efficient. It’s almost like we became a global company just from this relationship.” Founded in 2006, Berg first caught Microsoft’s eye last year, when the company partnered with Florida health system AdventHealth to figure out what factors led patients to contract Covid-19 at varying levels of severity and mortality. By analyzing tissue samples, Berg was able to find, for instance, that patients of color who were taking ACE inhibitors — medications that help relax the veins and arteries to lower blood pressure — died less frequently than those who were not taking those drugs. Now, Narain hopes to be able to apply Berg’s capabilities to indications well beyond Covid-19 — and anywhere in the world. He envisions physicians from faraway places uploading medical data to his company’s platform via Azure; Berg’s software would quickly analyze that data, form a handful of insights, then send those insights back to the physician, also via Azure. If a facility is not capable of analyzing a blood or tissue sample in house, clinicians can send samples to Berg overnight via a worldwide carrier the company has partnered with. Either way, he believes, Azure will enable faster connections that lead to better, and more equitable, outcomes for patients. “This relationship shows, when you can hybridize capability in business, how much more unique of an opportunity and how much more special both core competencies become,” Narain said. “Azure, without our Interrogative Biology platform, of course they’re doing well — they’re Azure. And we’re doing our business. But when you combine things, it’s like fusion cuisine. For whatever reason, it always tastes better.” RECENT NEWS SEPTEMBER 7, 2021 Biomarker panel to elevate prostate cancer diagnostics: Berg APRIL 1, 2021 Berg taps into supercomputer to battle COVID-19 variants OCTOBER 6, 2020 Healthcare Leaders Pioneer A New Collaboration Model To Transform The Future Of Drug Development SEPTEMBER 28, 2020 Berg Fuels Study of African-American COVID-19 Patients JUNE 18, 2020 Energy Department Uses Supercomputers to Tackle COVID-19 MAY 6, 2020 Boehringer Ingelheim adds second AI partner in a month VIEW ALL NEWS Berg_Logo ABOUT US Leadership Team Founders Board of Directors Scientific Advisory Board RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT Healthcare Professionals Our Pipeline Publications Patients and Caregivers Our Science Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB) Chemotherapy-Induced-Alopecia (CIA) Pancreatic Cancer Expanded Access and Compassionate Use Medical Resources Clinical Trials PARTNERS Pharmaceutical Healthcare Academic Government MEDIA News Features Press Releases Events Media Kit Clinical Trials CAREERS Join Our Team CONTACT Investor contact Media contact Partner contact Connect with us Headquarters and Innovation Center 500 Old Connecticut Path Framingham, MA 01701 Tel: (617) 588-0083 Email: Info@Berghealth.com © 2021 BERG LLCLEGAL Visit BERG on LinkedIn Visit BERG on Twitter Visit BERG on Facebook Visit the BERG YouTube channel