Rajvir Nagra Date published: Feb 08, 23

Welcome to Breaking Silos!

We've launched this podcast to help people within digital roles address the big challenges they face and discuss the industry's key themes by leveraging today's best ideas in business and technology to break down old barriers to collaboration and business success.

Each week you will be joined by one of our three Breaking Silos hosts from Ideagen and together you will learn from experts across diverse industries to save time, cut costs and simplify your workflows. We aim to help you build a more connected, digital-first tomorrow.

This week, Breaking Silos brings you a fascinating chat between Ideagen’s Raj Nagra and AstraZeneca’s Miriam Guest - Principal Microbiologist, New Modalities & Parenteral Development, Pharmaceutical Technology & Development, Operations. They discuss:

• What is meant by “technology uplift”
• How Microbiology departments and labs have progressed over recent years
• The challenges labs have faced when it comes to collaboration and using technology
• The need for collaboration and partnership between labs
• How a technology strategy comes into play
• Regulatory guidelines and who needs to be involved in an audit process
• And much, much more - including Miriam’s top tip for when beginning your technology uplift.

Listen now

About Miriam

Miriam Guest is a Principal Microbiologist at AstraZeneca, working in the New Modalities and Parenteral Development group; based at their Macclesfield site in the UK.

Miriam has worked in Pharmaceutical Development for over 20 years, in a range of roles, from the microbiology laboratory executing method development, to being a facility microbiologist supporting a multi-product aseptic manufacturing facility, as well as some time in formulation development. She returned to microbiology in 2012.

She designed and developed the technology strategy to modernise microbiology across AstraZeneca’s global network; this includes projects from feasibility studies to multi-site deployments.

She leads the Global Microbiology Forum at AstraZeneca, which connects microbiologists from approximately 25 sites across the globe – here she fosters a culture of collaboration to support the Quality function in driving standardisation and optimisation projects, the forum is an open learning network, with broad representation from other skill areas, as well the key contributions from microbiology.

Miriam is an active committee member of the Pharmaceutical Microbiology Interest Group (Pharmig).  She is an Editorial Advisory Board Member at the European Pharmaceutical Review, and she represents AstraZeneca on a range of cross industry collaboration networks.

Outside of work, there is rarely a quiet moment – between being a taxi-driver for her two teenage daughters, walking her two dogs, she also enjoys keeping active by playing football and squeezing in gym visits where she can.

With a schedule like that, we feel incredible privileged to have grabbed some time with her to discuss her work and enthusiasm for collaboration in the industry.

Next time…

Be on the lookout for our next episode, launching on Wednesday 15^th February 2023.