The Data-Centric Lab: A Pharmaceutical Perspective

The pharmaceutical industry is on the brink of entering into the digital age, yet still suffers from fundamental misconceptions and outdated IT systems that inhibit its progress. Four key criteria are identified that have enabled labs to reach the post-modern stage, which are insights generation through advanced analytics, automatic communication through machine to machine interfaces, removal of boundaries for an open lab, and novel means of ensuring trust through automatic submissions. Further progress in these four areas will enable the pharmaceutical laboratory to enter the digital age. Unfortunately, historical roadblocks in the form of an application-centric mindset have so far stifled progress. However, initiatives that supported other industries on their path into the digital age are introduced and evidences for the benefits of the digital age are provided. These span from advanced analytics, data-centric architecture, metadata supported communication, knowledge assisted submissions, to digital maturity models. It is concluded that executives and lab staff within Pharma needs a transition to a data-centric world view to reap all the benefits of the digital age for faster, better, and cheaper drug development.