The New Recipe for Pharma Success

By Paul Wlodarczyk, JustSystems One look at the numbers reveals the high stakes game that pharmaceutical companies play in their efforts to bring new drugs to market. In the United States, the numbers include: $800 million to $1 billion—the average cost of moving a new drug through the development process 12 to 15 years—the average time it takes to move a new drug through the development process Five to eight years—the average time a new drug enjoys patent protection once it reaches marketplace One in 10,000—the odds that a new compound will survive the development process, receive new drug approval, and ultimately reach the marketplace In contrast to the high stakes, the tools pharmaceutical companies use to move drugs through their lifecycles are decidedly low tech. Spreadsheets, flow charts, and other unstructured documents are used to create and maintain the process definitions that effectively serve as drug recipes. These documents are also ...