Boehringer Ingelheim and Lifebit Extend Collaboration to Accelerate Clinical Data Reuse in Early Discovery

A renewed three-year agreement deepens the use of a secure, federated Trusted Research Environment across Boehringer Ingelheim’s discovery research.

Only about one in ten of the drug programmes that enter clinical trials will ever reach approval — and the data from the rest, though it describes real biology in real people, is rarely analysed a second time. The obstacle is not a lack of scientific interest but governance: clinical trial data is identifiable, patient-level health data collected under a consent written for one specific study, so it cannot simply be copied into a central discovery environment. The alternative is to move the analysis, not the data — which is exactly what a Trusted Research Environment (TRE) makes possible. Today’s news shows what that looks like at scale, inside one of the world’s leading biopharmaceutical companies.

Ingelheim, Germany & London, United Kingdom — 1 September 2026 — Boehringer Ingelheim and Lifebit today announced a new three-year agreement to further extend and deepen their partnership. Building on more than four years of successful work, the renewed agreement reinforces both companies’ shared commitment to enabling fast, secure, and scalable reuse of clinical trial data to accelerate early discovery research.

A secure, federated Trusted Research Environment

At the core of the collaboration is a secure, federated Trusted Research Environment (TRE) — a next-generation computing environment that seamlessly connects Boehringer Ingelheim’s data ecosystem and governance capabilities with the Lifebit platform. Together, they provide scientists with a single, secure, and researcher-friendly interface for discovering, accessing, and analyzing patient-level data, while maintaining the highest standards of data protection and compliance.

The Lifebit platform is fully integrated into Boehringer Ingelheim’s internal IT landscape and establishes a robust data management foundation for transparent, auditable, and reproducible analyses. Critically, all data always remains under local custodianship and never leaves the secure environment, ensuring that sensitive clinical data is protected while still being made accessible for advanced research use cases.

Built for the specific demands of discovery science

“The Trusted Research Environment represents a core capability for enabling our scientists to work with clinical data in a secure, compliant, and highly efficient way — ultimately helping us develop novel solutions for the benefit of patients,” said Oliver Wissdorf, Head of IT RDM CI at Boehringer Ingelheim. “Lifebit has proven to be a reliable and innovative partner throughout this journey, delivering a TRE that is purpose-built to meet our specific scientific, technical, and governance requirements.”

“Boehringer Ingelheim has demonstrated a clear and forward-looking vision for unlocking the full potential of clinical data in discovery research,” said Dr. Maria Dunford, Chief Executive Officer of Lifebit. “We were particularly impressed by their decisive move away from generic, horizontal tools toward purpose-built systems co-developed with Lifebit — and by the speed and agility with which they established a modern, secure internal data infrastructure.”

The data that rarely gets a second look

Reuse of clinical trial data has long been constrained less by scientific interest than by governance. A Trusted Research Environment resolves this by reversing the usual arrangement: the data stays under its original custodianship and the analysis is brought to it, with every query governed, logged, and auditable. That is what makes secondary use of clinical trial data possible without breaching the terms it was collected under — a governance mechanism as much as a technical one.

The scale of the opportunity is visible in the industry’s own data-sharing platforms. A peer-reviewed analysis using a 2020 snapshot found roughly 9,000 studies listed across the major platforms, from which 1,201 data-access requests had been made and just 95 peer-reviewed publications produced — and a third of the studies on one platform had never been requested at all after five years of availability. Around 9.6% of drug programmes that enter Phase I clinical trials go on to reach approval; the data generated by the remainder remains largely unexamined.

Notes & sources: the data-sharing platform figures are from a 2020 snapshot and are cited for the ratio they illustrate rather than as a current measurement; the platforms have grown since. Consent scope varies between studies — a Trusted Research Environment enforces the terms of each consent per dataset; it does not override them. Sources: peer-reviewed analysis of Vivli, ClinicalStudyDataRequest.com, the YODA Project, Project Data Sphere and BioLINCC (PMC8595516); clinical development success rates from BIO and Informa BioMedTracker (9,985 phase transitions across 7,455 programmes).

Looking ahead

The continued partnership will focus on enabling faster and more comprehensive translational studies by seamlessly combining clinical insights with additional data types within governed, auditable workflows. This approach is designed to further inform drug development, enhance data-driven decision-making, and ultimately improve patient outcomes — all while preserving rigorous data governance and security standards.

About Boehringer Ingelheim

Boehringer Ingelheim is a biopharmaceutical company active in both human and animal health. As one of the industry’s top investors in research and development, the company focuses on developing innovative therapies that can improve and extend lives in areas of high unmet medical need. Independent since its foundation in 1885, Boehringer takes a long-term perspective, embedding sustainability along the entire value chain. Its approximately 54,300 employees serve over 130 markets to build a healthier and more sustainable tomorrow.

About Lifebit

Lifebit is the global leader in federated, secure, and AI-powered health data intelligence platforms and trusted research environments. It helps governments, health systems, and biopharma organisations unify, govern, and unlock biomedical data for real-world research, clinical impact, and life-saving discovery and decisions.

The Lifebit Platform is trusted by the largest number of governments and leading commercial organisations to securely manage and analyse over 275 million patient records across 30+ countries — including the USA’s NIH, UK’s Genomics England, Singapore’s Ministry of Health, Boehringer Ingelheim, United Health Group, FlatIron Health and 23andMe, among others.

With operations across the U.S., Canada, UK, Singapore, Japan and Australia, Lifebit powers national precision medicine programmes, enterprise data infrastructures, and AI-driven research initiatives worldwide.

Learn more at lifebit.ai

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