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UCB’s Chief Information Officer wins "CIO of the Year"

Posted by
Laurent Schots, Global Communications & Company Reputation
28-Nov-2016
Herman De Prins, Chief Information Officer at UCB, has won the ‘CIO of the Year’ award. The prize, awarded by Data News, recognises his vision, strategic insight, leadership qualities and personality.

Herman is responsible for the IT infrastructure used by our 7700 employees and his team delivers around 250 projects every year. Although UCB is considered to be a medium-sized player in the pharmaceutical sector, our CIO always thinks big. He continues to look at new initiatives in exciting and fast-moving areas such as artificial intelligence.

In an interview with Data News to mark the award, Herman praised the culture at UCB which values the role of technology in delivering on our promise to improve the lives of people with severe diseases. UCB is willing to invest in state-of-the-art information technologies that will fuel innovation and keep pace with our peers.

There is great scope for digital initiatives when it comes to working with doctors, academics and other partners. Further, when it comes to patients UCB continues to explore digital initiatives that can deliver value within the patient eco-system.

For example, we have been working in Big Data to support clinical decisions for people with epilepsy. In this sense, UCB is an ‘early adopter’ of promising big data and artificial intelligence technologies.

We are also working to use analytics to identify patients that would benefit from medication and to tap into the potential of machine learning – an area which Herman is particularly excited about.

Looking ahead, he sees a growing role for high-quality apps that help doctors choose the right medicine for the right patient, and believes advances in information technology will make it easier for smaller and medium-sized companies to create value for patients and society while spending less on technology itself.

“Yesterday was digital, social and mobile,” he says. “Today more and more it is all about artificial intelligence.”

We are delighted that Herman’s talent has been recognised and look forward to seeing him realise his vision for the future.

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