  Biomedical data is growing exponentially, and managing it is increasingly
challenging. While Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) data
principles provide guidance, their adoption has proven difficult, especially in
larger enterprises like pharmaceutical companies. In this manuscript, we
describe how we leverage an Ontology-Based Data Management (OBDM) strategy for
digital transformation in Novo Nordisk Research & Early Development. Here, we
include both our technical blueprint and our approach for organizational change
management. We further discuss how such an OBDM ecosystem plays a pivotal role
in the organizations digital aspirations for data federation and discovery
fuelled by artificial intelligence. Our aim for this paper is to share the
lessons learned in order to foster dialogue with parties navigating similar
waters while collectively advancing the efforts in the fields of data
management, semantics and data driven drug discovery.
