Life sciences industry looks to IT

Pharma and biotech companies will spend £17bn on IT solutions in 2010

Pharma industry has been suspicious of solutions to date

The global life science industry – comprising the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors - will spend nearly $17bn (£11.3bn) on commercial IT solutions in 2010, according to new research.

A report by Ovum said that this is despite the industry traditionally being relatively suspicious of IT solutions.

“The failure of many IT applications in the past has left key decision makers very wary - the industry is secretive and still reliant on paper-based, manual work flows,” said Ruchi Mallya, pharmaceutical technology analyst at Ovum.

However, government regulations and the expiration of patents on key drugs has caused a fall in sales for the industry, meaning senior executives will be more willing to use commercial IT solutions to streamline work and increase benefits from research and development.

The research agency cites the following tools as likely to be procured by the industry going forward:

• Information sharing tools such as laboratory information management systems (LIMs) and notebook computers – R&D operations tend to operate in silos making it difficult to share information.

• Electronic data capture - the current paper-based system for clinical trials has resulted in wrong information being stored and has cost the industry $500,000 (£333,000) to correct.

• In Silico Methods – this is a 'virtual' technology that uses computer simulations of the human body to develop drugs.