Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - August 2008 - (Page 15)

Pharmaceutical Executive Europe August 2008 Technology: IT 15 IT Meets IMI George Laszlo looks at how IT can impact the EU’s Innovative Medicines Initiative. V isiting Brussels in July comes with a bonus. You can enjoy fresh mussels prepared dozens of ways at any number of wonderful restaurants scattered throughout the city. If you sit outdoors, as I did just a few weeks ago, you can also watch the world go by while sipping double-strength beer from a local Trappist monastery. All of this makes the mind wander and mine went in the direction of the newly launched EU Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI). In the words of the non-profit IMI organisation, the initiative “will bring together public authorities, patients, academia, hospitals and industry with the aim to address complex aspects of precompetitive R&D.” (For a primer on the IMI Strategic Research Agenda, please see the sidebar ‘IMI SRA — Key Points.’) The initiative is meant to reverse the weak state of R&D productivity and competitiveness within the EU medicines sector (private, public and government.) Again, in the words of IMI, “Europe’s R&D investment is furthermore characterised by a much lower investment level than in other regions of the world. Whereas R&D investment grew five times in the US, it only grew 2.9 times in Europe. The emerging markets of China and India pose further competition.” lack of progress is perceived to hinder productivity and competitiveness. They are areas where solutions would truly be welcome. On the other hand, the approach automatically excludes ideas and innovations that may have a greater impact on R&D productivity than those selected. The role of information technology It is nearly impossible to think of any research area that could not benefit from the use of information and communication technologies. This is certainly true for the 18 projects included in the first call. Determining which technologies could be of use requires a careful reading of each project and may actually change based on the proposals received. I have taken a first stab at enumerating these and included them in Table 1. As the table illustrates, each investment will last somewhere between three and seven years, with the largest investment made for safety biomarkers. While it would be tempting to relate the level of investment in each project to its perceived value, such an evaluation would be erroneous since funds are allocated based on the amount needed to successfully complete each one. On the IT front, IMI specifically noted the need to focus on knowledge management. In their own words: “The knowledge management area will be key to leveraging the potential of new technologies such as genomics and proteomics and to analyse the huge amount of information in an integrated way.” As the table shows, however, there are many IT capabilities that could and should be leveraged in the service of R&D productivity. When reading the project descriptions, it becomes clear that the individuals who formulated them have different levels of IT expertise. Accordingly, the projects have different levels of focus on information technology. It is to be hoped that the organisations/companies proposing their solutions to IMI will compensate for any as yet unidentified IT elements. Perhaps the most glaring IT-related oversight by the first call, however, is a failure to consider how information and communication technologies could be applied across these projects rather than just within them. A good example of this is the need for collaboration tools where a single approach may be better than several. Another example would be tools and standards for the pooling of data. As Meeting the innovation challenge IMI’s answer for increasing R&D productivity and competitiveness is to support numerous multi-year initiatives financed by the EU and the life sciences industry (hence the public–private partnership). For industry, the investment will be in real Euros, sweat equity and the sharing of technical assets. The first call for high-level project proposals was made by IMI earlier this year with responses due by mid-July. With the window now closed for this first call, IMI will be evaluating responses and awaiting more detailed information on each by the end of November. Awards are expected by the end of December with projects kicking off in the March 2009 timeframe. With the focus of IMI on the areas of safety, efficacy, knowledge management and education/training, members identified 18 focus areas (see Table 1) that set the constraints for the first set of projects. The word ‘constraints’ is deliberately used here because the approach appears to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the constraint defines research areas where

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - August 2008

Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - August 2008
Contents
From the Editor
News and Analysis
Calendar
The Calm Before the Storm
Steering Pharma in Russia
Built on Sand
Renaissance Man
IT Meets IMI
Send for the Software Specialists
Know Your eMarket
Last Words

Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - August 2008