Not surprisingly, higher-throughput techniques are at their most productive when generating data that can be easily interpreted. In fact, today's data management systems are often customized to identify and automatically advance compounds from a screening run possessing a particular percent inhibition value. Modern assay techniques, such as fluorescence and pooling, generate multiple data points for a well that must be resolved before scientists can act on the results. And then there are the logistical concerns arising from the focus on projects rather than particular screening platforms. The value of focusing purely on the volume of data produced drops as the amount of knowledge you gain from each data point increases.
Screeners have confidence that they can generate data.
They know they can put the results into a database, even those generated by newer detection devices or by more complicated assays. In the early days of screening, home-grown software ruled the day. But in the past three years, vendor solutions have become more robust, giving organizations viable alternatives to building and maintaining systems themselves. In addition, many scientific software vendors have realized that tools supporting tasks such as cheminformatics integration and data visualization are essential, rather than peripheral, to screening. The following are a few of the providers and their products.