Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
tools into the environment in a meaningful way and build systems that
make sense to scientists. We therefore try to combine different types of
'T-shaped' [40] people. They are either experienced programmers with
science understanding or scientists with programming understanding.
Our group operate as a small, close-knit team, ensuring that 'everybody
knows everything' and therefore avoid any unnecessary alignment meetings.
Meetings are normally held in front of a white board with the entire team
present and concern workfl ow or front-end design, so all members know
what is going on, what is being decided and everybody can contribute ideas.
The method is not unique and was not invented by us, although it may
be unique in the pharma world, in Lundbeck Research Informatics it is
well established and feels natural. Similar approaches are being used by
several successful companies within innovation, design and software
development like IDEO [41] and 37signals [42]. In many of the large
open source projects that require some form of coordination, all
participants are also still producing and/or at least reading and accepting
the code entering the code base.
In addition, the mode of action is dependent on empowerment and
freedom to operate. If the informatics group needed to adhere to corporate
technology policies or await review and acceptance before embracing a
new tool, it would not be as successful. At Lundbeck the group reports to
the Head of Research and hence is independent of Corporate IT and
Finance as well as the individual disciplines within Research.
The group has been fortunate to experience only a single merger and
therefore has had the opportunity to focus on the one-system strategy for
a longer period, with the environment and system kept simple enough for
us to both develop and maintain at the same time.
1.11 Future aspirations
We do not expect, and do not hope, that the Life Science Project will ever
end. As long as Lundbeck is actively engaged in research there will be a
constant need for new developments/upgrades with support for new data
types, new visualisations and implementation of new technologies that
we do not yet know about.
Currently, we are looking into the use of semantic technology [43].
What is it and where does it make most sense to apply? Linking our
internal databases via Resource Description Framework (RDF) might
enable us to perform searches and fi nd links in data that are not easily
found with the current SQL-based technologies. But, as mentioned here,
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