Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
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Active development - tools having a large and active development
community.
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Easy to deploy - with only limited requirements on the user platform
in terms of Operating System, browser etc., hence reducing the
probability and impact of desktop platform upgrades.
In conclusion our ambition was to build a web-based research enterprise
data management system, covering the pre-clinical areas at Lundbeck,
entirely on open source tools with the exceptions that the legacy
commercial database and chemical engine would stay.
1.4 Path chosen
One could argue that an in-house system such as LSP is commodity
software that does not offer anything more than some commercial
packages, and therefore should be bought 'off the shelf'. It is argued here
that there was (is) no single commercial system available which supports
all the areas of functionality required across the pipeline described in the
introduction. Consequently, without our own in-house system Lundbeck
would need to acquire several different packages and subsequently
combine these via continued expensive integration projects as mentioned
earlier. Such an approach is very likely not the best and most cost-effective
approach and certainly does not give the scientists the best possible
support. Additionally, the maintenance of many single applications would
be a burden for the department. Thus, the approach at Lundbeck is
instead to build one coherent system. Everything that is built needs to fi t
into the system and hence all projects are extensions of the system rather
than individual applications for chemistry, biology and pharmacology.
Having a one-system focus is not without confl icts in today's business
environment with a heavy focus on projects, deliverables and timelines
(not to mention bonuses). If developers are forced to deliver on time and
on budget they will likely ask for agreed deliverables, which means a
small(er) tangible piece of code (application) on which all stakeholders
can agree. Firstly, if we can agree up front what needs to be built we are
not talking about something new (hence no innovation), and, secondly, if
the timeline and/or budget is approaching the developers will cut down
on the functionality. The question is whether software developed under
these circumstances will match the real requirements.
The one-system approach allows searches across data from different
areas without any integration, data warehousing or data duplication. We
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