Biopharmaceutical professionals will be familiar with the scientists’ lament about the amount of time they waste trying to track down data or, worse still, having to re-run experiments because of missing data.

The development of biological therapeutics is multifaceted by nature and increasingly requires collaboration and partnerships throughout the development value chain. Couple this with the ever-growing data volumes generated by increasingly sophisticated process equipment, and dealing with complexity becomes part of the everyday life of a biopharmaceutical professional. Such complexity frequently results in the introduction of costly errors and inefficiencies. Quality suffers, development lifecycles become longer and scientists spend an increasing amount of their time on data admin.

The cost of doing nothing

Most biopharmaceutical organizations lack a standardized, comprehensive approach to data management and quality control; with a heavy reliance on paper-based, manual processes and heterogeneous, unconnected systems. The number of participants in a typical development process is increasing, resulting in information being spread across the organization in data silos such as file stores, binders, notebooks and within people’s heads.

Studies have shown that scientists in biopharmaceutical organizations spend up to five hours per week looking for data to prepare reports. Alarmingly, often the data needed cannot be found, which can lead to experiments and even entire projects having to be re-run. This not only wastes time, but the need to purchase new reagents and materials and the increased load on expensive fixed capital assets can have a significant impact on costs.

The value of insight

By integrating data with workflows, common errors can be engineered out of processes and a ‘right first time’ approach can be realized. Bioprocessing operations can be optimized and QA overheads can be minimized. A single enterprise data management platform facilitates the flow of data across the development lifecycle and provides organizations with unparalleled insight across their products and processes.

If you’d like to hear more about how IDBS can help your scientists get back to focusing on science by optimizing your biologics development processes, then join me on October 29 for my webinar exploring this topic.