Information and Communication Technology: Speeding Discovery and Innovation

By Bernard Courtois, president of the Information Technology Association of Canada

In its ongoing pursuit of scientific discovery, Canada’s pharmaceutical/ biotechnology industry has emerged as one of our country’s most R&D-intensive sectors. To fully leverage these vital investments, Canadian pharma/biotech companies are turning more and more to information and communications technologies to achieve new levels of innovation, market growth and efficiency.
The Research Infosource Inc. (Toronto, ON) 2004 survey of Canada’s top corporate R&D spenders, for example, reveals that the pharma/biotech sector is second only to the communications/telecommunications equipment sector in R&D expenditures. According to Canada’s Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (Ottawa, ON) and the Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association (Toronto, ON), respectively, Canadian brand-name pharmaceutical companies annually spend $1.1 billion on R&D, while generic manufacturers invest about $250 million.
Overall, the pharmaceutical industry is the fifth largest and fourth fastest growing sector of the high knowledge manufacturing industries in Canada, approaching $10 billion in sales. In 2001, Canada accounted for 10 per cent of the global new medicines discovered, despite the fact that our country represents only 1.8 per cent of the world pharmaceutical market1.
Canada ranks among the world leaders in the creation of biotechnology companies. In 2003, the number of Canadian biotechnology companies grew to 470, with more than half of these companies exploring therapeutic or diagnostic innovations. Additionally, there are currently 540 products in the biopharmaceutical product pipeline2.
These innovation investments are crucial to Canada’s health-care system. A recent study conducted by Columbia University (New York, NY) reveals that for every dollar invested in new medicine, the health-care system is relieved from seven times the expenses in other medical areas.
Nevertheless, drug development is a very expensive proposition. Strategy consultancy Bain & Co. Inc. (Boston, MA) estimates that the cost to discover, develop and launch a new drug is now $1.7 billion US. But the expected return on investment for a major drug breakthrough has fallen to just five per cent, well below a company’s capital cost.
The product-driven pharmaceutical industry is therefore focusing more of its information technology (IT) investments on efforts to increase efficiency and productivity. These include the re-engineering of R&D operations, the restructuring of supply chains, and improving customer service and sales operations.
For instance, given intense government regulation and the need to consistently monitor quality along each step of the drug-development process, effective information management is key. Last April, Compugen Inc. (Toronto, ON), an IT-consulting company, and Microsoft Corp. (Redmond, WA) worked with Edmonton, Alta.-based biopharmaceutical firm Isotechnika Inc. to streamline its document management processes3.
Isotechnika develops treatments for autoimmune diseases, and also anti-rejection drugs for transplant recipients. The clinical trials process requires multiple versions of reports, creating vast amounts of paperwork. At Compugen’s suggestion, Isotechnika took part in the beta test of the new Microsoft Office System 2003 and its new collaborative tool called Windows® SharePoint® Team Services.
SharePoint enables users to set up Web sites that allow team members to share information and collaborate on documents, with each version available for later review. Consequently, a consultative review process, that in the past took two to three weeks, now takes a week or less.
Using Microsoft’s InfoPath® 2003 information-gathering program and Windows-based Rights Management technology, Isotechnika also uses an electronic signature system that eliminates the need for manual sign-off on reports and forms.
Canada’s pharma/biotech sector is also actively exploring high-performance computing to speed up research. Uncovering valuable correlations among the wealth of data generated throughout a drug’s lifetime, exploring genomic algorithms or conducting experimental simulations all require incredible computing capacity and high-speed communications networks. Grid computing — the application of many networked computers to a single problem at the same time — is promising because it can provide this enormous computing power.
Ottawa, Ont.-based Macadamian Technologies Inc. is building a grid-computing infrastructure for the bio-informatics, coding, cryptology and combinatorial algorithms lab at the University of Ottawa (Ottawa, ON).
In the highly competitive pharma/biotech industry, market knowledge and customer responsiveness is as critical as R&D. Again, information and communication technology provides a valuable advantage as Novartis Pharmaceuticals Canada Inc. (Dorval, QC) discovered when it joined with Siebel Systems Inc. (San Mateo, CA) to craft a new strategy for its customer relationship management (CRM).
Novartis Pharmaceuticals Canada’s sales force had expanded by 75 per cent, over 18 months, to 400 sales professionals that used a variety of sales systems, both paper and electronic4.
Novartis wanted to develop a co-ordinated approach to gathering comprehensive customer information, identifying top customer targets and ensuring that each customer received a seamless sales experience and consistent messages about Novartis products and services.
After putting a large number of vendors to the test, Novartis selected Siebel Pharma Sales software, an application tailored specifically to the needs of the pharmaceutical industry. It created a 40-person team with members from sales, marketing and IT that updated and streamlined Novartis’s business processes to reflect best practices.
Siebel Global Services then trained the Novartis IT team, which, along with Skura Corp. (Mississauga, ON) and Siebel, deployed Siebel Pharma Sales in English and French. The entire initiative, from project definition to pilot, was completed within just five months.
Canadian pharma/biotech companies are also leveraging IT to streamline fundamental business processes. GHI Technologies Co. Ltd. (Mississauga, ON) and Microsoft Canada Co. (Mississauga, ON), for instance, partnered with Purdue Pharma LP (Stamford, CT) to replace its paper-based reporting system with an advanced business intelligence, or BI system, that tracks, analyses and delivers marketing data over the Web.
Using Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition with Analysis Services and incorporating Microsoft’s intuitive data analyser on the desktop, members of Purdue’s marketing team can now access the latest information quickly and then “slice and dice” data according to sales growth, segmentation trends and market share, among other criteria5.
In the past, Purdue’s sales professionals spent hours sifting through years of data to produce an appropriate commercial quotation. Today, the data is compiled, accurately and comprehensively, in a fraction of the time. Additionally, graphical information, such as pie charts, can now be used in reports and presentations to illustrate important sales information.
In addition, innovative applications of electronic, mechanical and information technologies are advancing the development of sophisticated medical devices. For example, Victhom Human Bionics Inc. (Quebec City, QC), which was named Quebec City’s Innovative Enterprise of the Year by Fidéides 2004 last March, is developing the next generation of prostheses, known as anthropomorphic limbs.
The first product slated for commercialization is an auto-adaptive prosthesis that restores the functional mobility of above-knee amputees. According to Victhom, the prosthesis has biomechanics similar to those of a real knee and eliminates or reduces the inconveniences experienced with traditional prostheses, such as a slowing down of movement, limited mobility (difficulty climbing stairs), and misalignment at the pelvis.
In 2003, Victhom and its commercialization partner, Oessur (Reykjavik, Iceland), announced that Lucien Bouchard, the former premier of Quebec, would participate in the pre-commercial clinical trials using Victhom’s bionic leg prosthesis. Bouchard joined a group of about 15 individuals who are presently testing Victhom’s bionic leg. In accepting Victhom’s Innovative Enterprise award, Benoit Côte, president and CEO, underscored that “innovation becomes meaningful when it allows us to solve problems and meet real and urgent needs.”
Clearly, that belief is widely shared by Canada’s pharma/biotech companies. Their investments in ICT are streamlining processes, accelerating research and bringing new products to market faster. That’s good news for Canada’s health-care system — and great news for Canadians.

References
(1)     Government of Canada. The Canadian Pharmaceutical Industry – April 2002 Innovation Profile. www.innovation.gc.ca/gol
/innovation/site.nsf/en/in02587.html
(2)     Industry Canada. Life Sciences Gateway – Sector Profile. http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet
/inlsg-pdsv.nsf/en/h_hn00079e.html
(3)     “IT Solution May Shorten Drug Development Cycle.” The Globe and Mail. May19, 2004.
(4)     Novartis Pharmaceuticals Canada Enables a Customer-Centric Future in Five Months. Siebel Customer Success Story. www.siebel.com/common/includes/pdf_frame.shtm?pdfUrl=
/downloads/case_studies/novartis.pdf
(5)     “Purdue Pharma meets data analysis and business-decision support.” Microsoft Case Studies. May, 20 2004. www.microsoft.com/canada/casestudies/Purdue.mspx