NEED FOR COLLABORATIVE TECHNOLOGIES IN DRUG DISCOVERY - Collaborative Computational Technologies for Biomedical Research - page 7

Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee; SRI International in Menlo Park,
California; and the University of California at San Francisco.
Like the biotechnology revolution of the late 1970s, the current trend in the
creation of networks of public and private institutions, if successfully opera-
tionalized, could transform the health care industry. It is important to acknowl-
edge the lessons from the biotechnology revolution as discussed above and
plan accordingly to avoid the pitfalls. In order to be successful, the academic
institutions must strive to establish truly open and standard data exchange
mechanisms and coordinate activities effectively across a highly distributed
enterprise that must adopt an integrated business process.

1.2 SETTING THE STAGE FOR COLLABORATIONS

A reorientation of our business models to focus on products and services will
be required if the collaborative R&D environment is to be effectively realized.
An acknowledgment, by the industry as a whole, must be made that we dif-
ferentiate ourselves in the marketplace not through our intellectual property
but rather through the delivery of products and services that attract and retain
consumers. The R&D process, in any industry, is timely, expensive, and, except
for those rare instances where true discoveries/inventions are being made,
commoditizable across the industry in the sector. A clear understanding and
declaration of what differentiates one company from the next in the market-
place must be established and adopted. Only then can we begin to pool our
limited resources effectively to solve common problems and focus our specifi c
internal resources on the elements of the R&D process that allow us to trans-
form the health care system and succeed in the marketplace as individual
companies.

1.2.1 Current Business, Technical, and Scientifi c Landscape

The business value of an information technology (IT) system is based on the
ability of the system to support and enhance the business process. Fundamentally,
open standards are intended to provide resilience to withstand the technical
volatility within business processes and their associated systems. If a system
and the business process were fl awlessly stable over many years, then there
would be little value in developing and adopting standards. However, within
the pharmaceutical industry, volatility and upheaval abound in every phase of
R&D. Perhaps the largest source of upheaval within our industry is the vola-
tility of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) among industry peers as well as
business partners, commercial suppliers, and clinical research organizations
(CROs) (Fig. 1.2 ). This M & A volatility — coupled with exponential growth in
outsourcing—has placed tremendous pressure on R&D processes to change
frequently and dramatically. Common pharmaceutical processes like target
identifi cation, compound synthesis, in vivo toxicology, biomarker discovery,