Making informed decisions at every step of the research process, from the initial stages of R&D through to the marketing of a finished product, is a major challenge facing the scientific community. A multinational pharmaceutical R&D team can typically consist of thousands of end users working together, from more than one hundred different disciplines.

Under these circumstances, it is critical that organizations know how and where to find focused, valuable information, so they can enhance their productivity and determine where best to focus their projects. However, the information needs of the pharmaceutical market have traditionally been served by a large number of disparate vendors and delivered through a myriad of different interfaces. This has led to complexity and variation in data formats and functionality, as well as a lack of intuitive and consistent retrieval and analysis tools.

Addressing customer needs:

• To ensure the solution fully addressed customer needs, Sunflower first conducted a survey of pharmaceutical
  customers. Respondents were asked which types of information databases they considered to be most critical to their work.
• Unsurprisingly, 75% of those surveyed viewed scientific literature as important, while 68% also investigational drug
  databases as critical. 56% of those surveyed viewed patents as critical, while marketed drugs were seen as important by 53%.
• Respondents were also asked to comment on the functionality they would like to see in an information database. They said they would most like to have:
  • The ability to personalize the way content is displayed by job function, therapeutic area, and chosen drug
    target.
  • The ability to cross-search third-party databases
  • The ability to annotate documents and share them with colleagues in a project folder.

Determining the critical factors

Sunflower used the results of this survey to determine which elements would be needed in an information
solution that meets the critical needs of the pharmaceutical market. It was determined that a prospective new
solution would need to offer:

• The ability to search multiple global information sources, including third party sources, and the ability to search
  sources individually
• The ability to conduct basic and advanced searches, including field searching, free-text, Boolean searching and
  proximity searching
• The ability to create personalized alerting strategies
• Open architecture that makes use of standard IT tools and platforms
• User management capabilities and detailed usage metrics
• Appropriate content re-use rights, such as the ability to use host content internally for text-mining and
  re-distribution
• The flexibility to add other content
• Integrated analysis tools
• High performance, ensuring stability and data availability in a secure environment

Solution - MAKROS: more than the sum of its parts

The result is MAKROS; a powerful, dynamic, and wide-ranging solution that is being iteratively built to address these needs. It allows you to build unique, integrated content in seven core areas:

• Drugs
• Intellectual property
• Literature and news
• Companies
• Chemistry
• Targets
• Sequences

Using Makros you can build content in all these core areas and access information quickly and accurately.

This premium content is combined with powerful search and navigation tools to help customers make more informed decisions at every stage of the drug development process.