At the request of several pharmaceutical clients, Patni conducted a benchmarking survey covering the areas of implementation, compliance, and IT support of systems and technologies used in their laboratories. A primary interest was to understand and document current industry practices and, following that, to identify and recommend best practices around several key areas in laboratory informatics relevant to the pharmaceutical industry. These included implementation and validation of global lab informatics systems and achieving and maintaining compliance of laboratory IT systems.
Key findings included the following:
Functionality In Use and Integration of Systems Lags Significantly Behind Capabilities Offered - While most companies have implemented or are in the process of implementing major informatics tools such as Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS), Chromatography Data Systems (CDS), and Data Archiving Systems, the richness of functionality being implemented, particularly in the area of integration within the enterprise, lags significantly behind the reported capabilities of the products.
Single-Vendor Standardization Offers Economies of Scale - Many companies are progressing well with efforts to standardize on single vendors for LIMS, CDS and Data Archiving Systems. This offers opportunities to achieve economies of scale in the purchase, implementation, and support of systems and simplifies integration strategies.
Organizational Resistance to Change Continues to Threaten - Companies are struggling with harmonizing requirements for global systems and expanding the penetration of technology. A major historical barrier for IT projects, organizational resistance to change, continues to threaten the realization of many of the process improvement and efficiency improvements made possible by new technologies.
More detailed results of the survey are mentioned in this Thought Paper. A brief discussion of the process and demographics of participation in the survey is followed by a focus on the three primary areas of interest: Systems and Technology, Compliance, and IT Support.
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