Software RT_4August 18/02/2010 13:52 Page 85
ROUNDTABLE
Using IT to improve success rates NGP gathers some of the industry’s leading experts to discuss how information technology can support and develop the discovery process. As the pharmaceutical industry changes in response to unprecedented challenges, how must the information technology supporting the drug discovery process evolve and be redefined in order to improve research productivity and success rates? Amos Dor. As the pharmaceutical industry changes, the information technology supporting it must be able to keep up. Advanced sensors are needed to gain information about the materials being used, the process they go through, and their results. This investment in sensors, however well intentioned, doesn’t add value without the means to collect, store and understand
THE PANEL
Amos Dor is the Umetrics US Manager at MKS Instruments in San Jose, California. He manages marketing, business development, application, operation, and sales for North America, South America and Israel. He has 20 years of broad experience in management, marketing, business development and engineering in start-ups and large organizations.
Patrick Flanagan is Chief Operating Officer for Tripos International and leads the organization’s commercial efforts. Prior to joining Tripos, his career included strategic sales and business development for leading companies in the healthcare, software, and consulting fields including Baxter International, Allegiance Healthcare and A.T. Kearney and Oracle.
the data they provide. IT must be able to support this data explosion with databases, networks and advanced data analysis tools. The analysis tools especially need to be trustworthy and intuitive to maximize benefits from their use. Multivariate analysis becomes even more important when the number of variables being considered increases. Correlations between variables must be considered, and it is very difficult to see correlations between more than four or five variables at a time when they are looked at individually. To truly optimize productivity and success, the majority of time and resources should be focused on decision-making based on relevant information, instead of on how to collect and plot the data. Patrick Flanagan. All pharmaceutical organizations have their own data stores and data access applications. Standardizing on an extensible product that fulfils their data requirements reduces costs and allows internal IT groups to focus on adding value rather than supporting the base platform. Introduction of data standards makes data more readily capturable, sharable, and understandable and ultimately valuable. The tangible benefits of adopting/moving to a product-based solution are straightforward: reduced cost of ownership, focus of internal resources on delivery of higher value scientific capabilities, and reduced burden on the scientist of tedious data manipulation tasks. The less tangible benefits offer a vastly higher value and productivity gains to the scientist and project leadership: increased focus of scientists on the meaning of their data and delivering the next progression in their project rather than on how to move data around their computers, and improvement in the use and interpretation of data. In the current climate, pharmaceutical drug development must increase its productivity. How can the more widespread use of technology support tools help streamline and improve discovery processes?
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