Is Your Tech­nol­o­gy Keep­ing Pace with Your Sci­ence?

Sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy are evolv­ing at an un­prece­dent­ed pace. Great care is called for when gath­er­ing re­quire­ments and mak­ing choic­es for sci­en­tif­ic in­for­mat­ics and soft­ware needs. There are few more vex­ing chal­lenges than in­her­it­ing a poor­ly per­form­ing and en­trenched lega­cy en­ter­prise IT en­vi­ron­ment rid­dled with da­ta and process si­los. The cost, pol­i­tics, and per­sua­sion need­ed for change can over­whelm those who haven’t been shown the true val­ue and po­ten­tial up­side. The Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion and Price Wa­ter­house Coop­er pub­lished The Cost of Not Hav­ing FAIR Re­search Da­ta in 2019, show­ing that this short­com­ing alone costs the Eu­ro­pean Union ~ € 26 bil­lion a year. We sus­pect this fig­ure may be low as our analy­sis shows the cost per re­searcher be­ing kept busy “wran­gling da­ta” forty per­cent of their time is high­er. Pur­su­ing Dig­i­tal and In­sil­co Mod­el-First strate­gies be­come un­at­tain­able, along with the abil­i­ty to ful­ly lever­age “Big Da­ta.” Dis­joint­ed process­es and siloed da­ta sys­tems con­tribute to ex­ces­sive costs, re­duced qual­i­ty, and el­e­vat­ed risk. So, you should care be­cause the cost, poor per­for­mance, in­ef­fi­cient process­es are not on­ly erod­ing your or­ga­ni­za­tion’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties but are al­so lim­it­ing the achieve­ments of your re­search and de­vel­op­ment teams.

The goal is more ef­fi­cient sci­en­tif­ic busi­ness process­es, lead­ing to a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life for sci­en­tists/re­searchers, and the con­sumers we are work­ing for. Un­til now, there are very few en­ter­prise sci­en­tif­ic IT plat­forms that can span the con­tin­u­um of life and ma­te­r­i­al sci­ence or­ga­ni­za­tions (Dis­cov­ery to Prod­uct). The flex­i­bil­i­ty, scal­a­bil­i­ty, and abil­i­ty to im­pose rig­or on com­plex process­es will dri­ve re­pro­ducibil­i­ty, com­pli­ance, and FAIR da­ta and process­es. This im­prove­ment will ul­ti­mate­ly de­liv­er re­pro­ducibil­i­ty in sci­ence, bet­ter avail­abil­i­ty and use of Mod­el-Qual­i­ty Da­ta, and smoother or even seam­less knowl­edge and tech trans­fer.

L7 In­for­mat­ics, Inc. has built one of the best sci­en­tif­ic uni­fied plat­forms on the mar­ket called L7|ESP™. With this, L7 has raised the bar for en­ter­prise sci­en­tif­ic soft­ware with its “No Code/Low Code” ca­pa­bil­i­ties and its ef­fi­cien­cy in gain­ing Com­pos­able Ar­chi­tec­ture.

The com­pos­able ar­chi­tec­ture men­tioned above, and the flex­i­bil­i­ty and pre­pared­ness it de­liv­ers, pro­vide a blue­print for L7|ESP. It is a uni­fied plat­form ecosys­tem that con­tin­u­al­ly adds func­tion­al­i­ty (new busi­ness ap­pli­ca­tions, in­stru­ment and equip­ment con­nec­tors, sci­en­tif­ic con­tent) and ca­pa­bil­i­ties; with a rate of in­no­va­tion that sets the stan­dard in the field. Just last year, L7 In­for­mat­ics was rec­og­nized by Gart­ner as Cool Ven­dor in Life Sci­ences and has been iden­ti­fied as a sam­ple ven­dor in eight Hype Cy­cle re­ports. Re­cent­ly L7 was fea­tured and pre­sent­ed case stud­ies with cus­tomers Cog­nate BioSer­vices and Gradalis at ISCT and AS­GCT  re­spec­tive­ly.

In drug dis­cov­ery or ther­a­peu­tics R&D, re­search typ­i­cal­ly pro­ceeds in a dy­nam­ic state (with pock­ets of sta­bil­i­ty) then pro­gress­es to a more sta­t­ic state as a new prod­uct moves clos­er to man­u­fac­tur­ing. Some oth­er dif­fer­ences that im­pose ex­oge­nous con­straints are the need for GXP and val­i­da­tion, which is on the De­vel­op­ment, Clin­i­cal, and Man­u­fac­tur­ing side of the house. The op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­duce a com­pa­ny’s IT foot­print is sub­stan­tial and press­ing. There are plat­forms avail­able that can re­place mul­ti­ple lega­cy and an­ti­quat­ed tools and do it with speed, flex­i­bil­i­ty, and risk re­duc­tion. Com­pos­able ap­proach­es will help dri­ve these ef­fi­cien­cy gains by re­duc­ing costs as­so­ci­at­ed with dis­con­nect­ed IT.

The cur­rent Bio­phar­ma and Health­care ver­ti­cals are not that sim­ple for ex­ist­ing en­vi­ron­ments, ven­dor part­ners, and ex­ter­nal­iza­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion, all of which car­ry a vast amount of lega­cy IT. Bril­liant­ly L7 in­te­grates with ex­ist­ing sys­tems and en­vi­ron­ments, al­low­ing for a plug-and-play ap­proach to evolv­ing hy­brid so­lu­tions while stay­ing po­si­tioned to con­sol­i­date and sim­pli­fy the over­all IT foot­print. Each step re­duces un­nec­es­sary com­plex­i­ty, dri­ving dig­i­tal­iza­tion strat­e­gy in a co­her­ent and man­age­able man­ner. This ap­proach re­sults in FAIR da­ta and process­es, open­ing the door to an En­ti­ty Life Cy­cle man­age­ment ap­proach that can dri­ve in­no­va­tion. A city plan­ning anal­o­gy would be Boston ver­sus Chica­go. Have you ever been lost in Boston for hours try­ing to fig­ure out how you will find your way back? (Thank the Gods for GPS.)

L7|ESP al­lows a well-writ­ten and ar­chi­tect­ed tool to han­dle the com­plex­i­ties in ma­jor da­ta-dri­ven or­ga­ni­za­tions. Whether it is gene edit­ing da­ta and process­es, cell ther­a­py, small mol­e­cule or large mol­e­cule de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing, com­pan­ion di­ag­nos­tics de­vel­op­ment, or agri­cul­tur­al sci­ences, the L7|ESP plat­form can han­dle the work­flows due to its flex­i­bil­i­ty, scal­a­bil­i­ty, and the reuse de­liv­ered by a com­pos­able ar­chi­tec­ture. Com­plex bi­o­log­ics de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing groups, in­clud­ing CD­MOs, quick­ly see the val­ue in this ap­proach as their busi­ness process­es can be be­come very vari­ant due to the emer­gence of new modal­i­ties and pre­ci­sion med­i­cine ther­a­pies.

What makes L7|ESP stand out as a unique Next-Gen­er­a­tion plat­form are its reusable, FAIR-com­pli­ant build­ing blocks. Sci­en­tif­ic busi­ness process­es are not on­ly well de­fined but ex­ist as a prim­i­tive or build­ing block. Need to com­bine process­es? No prob­lem! Want to do this with da­ta mod­els? You can do it! And with the L7 ap­proach da­ta mod­els, sci­en­tif­ic work­flows, in­stru­ments, ap­pli­ca­tions, and ser­vices con­nec­tors are al­so part of the prim­i­tive frame­work. There is a grow­ing el­e­ment of COTS (Com­mer­cial Off the Shelf) but the abil­i­ty to cre­ate new con­nec­tors be­comes rou­tine. Com­plex­i­ty in process­es can be a pre­car­i­ous thing. If the com­plex­i­ty is due to poor process­es, poor cu­ra­tion, and/or bu­reau­cra­cy, on­ly sig­nif­i­cant change man­age­ment can ad­dress the prob­lem. If the com­plex­i­ty is due to sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy process­es alone then L7 can re­duce and man­age it through its L7|ESP plat­form. The de­tails of im­ple­men­ta­tion will de­pend on the cur­rent and type com­plex­i­ty of each en­vi­ron­ment, and the role L7|ESP will play ini­tial­ly or in the months and years ahead. Re­mark­ably, it does not take a year to con­fig­ure the sys­tem, rather, it can be­come ful­ly op­er­a­tional in weeks. This ul­ti­mate­ly means life­sav­ing or al­ter­ing prod­ucts will get to mar­ket faster.

To learn more, please con­tact L7 In­for­mat­ics for a full tech­ni­cal whitepa­per on this sub­ject.

John Con­way is the Founder & CVO of 20/15 Vi­sioneers.