Knowledge-Sharing Platforms Emerge From Life Science Research Collaboration

One of the hottest topics at life science conferences these days is collaboration. For budgetary reasons, pharmaceutical companies that 10 or 15 years ago would have handled every aspect of research and development in-house have externalized those services to academic partners and outsourced service providers.

"The big pharmas are now under pressure to squeeze out inefficiencies. One response is mergers; another is becoming like Hollywood studios. They just focus on the marketing while outside groups handle other aspects of research," says Barry Bunin, CEO of Collaborative Drug Discovery, a for-profit company offering a cloud-based knowledge-sharing platform for life science research. The industry is seeing the economics of specialization. He explains, "Whoever is best at one particular aspect of the research chain focuses on that and then hands it off."

Alan Louie, research director for clinical development strategy and technology at IDC Health Insights, says the push for greater collaboration is an ongoing trend in the industry, largely driven by the business needs of the top pharmaceutical companies. He has studied the impact of those changes on how data is shared...