To mark its 10th anniversary, Drug Discovery & Development magazine invited industry vendors to reflect on the history and made predictions about future of the industry. Featured here are verbatim comments from this company.
Microsoft, Inc.
Headquarters
Redmond, Wash.
Spokesperson
Michael Naimoli, Industry Solutions Director for Microsoft’s U.S. Healthcare & Life Sciences Group
Web site
About the company
Microsoft’s U.S. Life Sciences Group provides standards-based solutions that help the life sciences industry break down barriers between disparate IT environments across pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies, physicians and healthcare professionals, provider organizations, private-sector employers, health insurers and consumers. Microsoft delivers both platform and partner solutions, ranging from mobility offerings for pharmaceutical sales reps to electronic content management systems that help drug companies get greater returns on their R&D--ultimately bringing critical information to people who need it most and making it easier to connect with teams, information and business processes.
The company’s line of business as it was 10 years ago. Changes in life science/drug research that influenced business.
For years, Microsoft has been the platform of choice for Life Sciences information workers. So while our specific focus on the industry is relatively new, we have been in the industry for years. I came from the industry, and have been a power-user of Excel for sometime because of my experience with that tool while in the industry.
Changes such as the shift from a fully integrated pharmaceutical company approach to more of a network approach, and the forced disintegration of the product value chain that has resulted in companies outsourcing manufacturing, discovery, and clinical trials, Microsoft has quite naturally served as the collaboration platform of choice for the pharmaceutical industry.
Scientific challenges in the next 10 years.
The number one challenge facing the industry is around pipeline management. Microsoft is seeing predictions of $62 billion dollars worth of drugs coming off patent by the year 2011, and as a result the industry may easily see negative growth going forward. Therefore, continuing to develop a robust pipeline and using collaboration to really spur innovation in such a regulatory constrained environment is the biggest challenge we see from a scientific perspective. Moreover, the increasing cost associated with going to market is really fueling the importance of managing the pipeline in new ways. The industry needs to view their pipeline as a portfolio of options, that include in licensing and M&A options, and properly value these options around their value to invest, accelerate, hold, or kill.
Factor(s) that drove the development of technologies during the last 10 years and greatest area of growths.
The biggest factor driving information technology within the life sciences is the fact that there are so many data silos within the pharmaceutical organizations and this is only exasperated by the increasingly global environment in which these companies must work. Companies have increasingly needed platforms for collaboration to drive innovation within their organization. In fact, collaboration tools are the biggest area of growth we’ve seen. For example, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is the fastest billion dollar product in the history of Microsoft. This is in part due to its demand as a collaboration platform within the pharmaceutical and bio pharmaceutical organizations to which we sell.
Bold Prediction: Where will drug research technology be in 10 years?
In the next 10 years, I predict that drug research will be personalized. We’re going to see more of a feedback loop where actual research and development will be done based on what population present themselves in the real world. For example, consumers will be able to provide data/information to fuel innovation by exhibiting certain disease states or diseases that are part of their personal profile.
