And the trend couldn't come at a better moment. On top of all that, the flood of information from the Human Genome Project ramps up the competitive pressure to test more compounds and move more quickly. Information technology provides the only means for drug companies to automate and truncate the development process. And the players are willing to spend big money, says Pradip Banerjee, a senior partner with Accenture Consulting. That number could quickly grow to the tens of billions as clinics and doctors begin using new genetic technologies to treat patients.
Companies use information technology in radically different ways.
At Merck, a longtime star on the BW 50, it is all about sharing knowledge. Richard A. Blevins, Merck's bioinformatics chief, has spent the last eight years making sure that information contained in the company's 150 databases can be accessed by each of the company's 7000 scientists. This organizational feat assures that the millions of pieces of data generated by each experiment can be quickly scrutinized and correlated with billions of other data bits streaming from Merck's other labs. Looking at the data in real time, he says, allows company scientists to make fast calls about which compounds to push into development. BMS has also created a centralized list of procedures, or protocols, to be followed in an experiment.