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Localized departmental systems. Localized IT systems have been built by departments/functions to support their processes and tasks. In many cases, this has been done in an isolated manner, with the interfaces to the other areas of the drug development process receiving secondary consideration. In these scenarios, rather than facilitating integration, IT is a barrier between departments and to the flow of the overall process. |
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Communications facilities. This includes tools which support communication between individuals. Currently, electronic mail provides the main communication channel but this is mainly used for ad hoc, unstructured communication. With a strong lead from management, electronic mail has revolutionized working environments enabling circulation of news, information and copies of documents to many recipients at the touch of a button. Unfortunately, the ease and speed of spreading information via electronic mail is easily abused. Information saturation is fast becoming commonplace, and, as a result, valuable information is being lost. |
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Figure 1 illustrates the typical fragmented set of IT tools with which members of a drug development project are faced. Typical team members (User) have access to stand-alone personal productivity tools local to the PC. They also have access to one or more departmental systems. This enables them to work with certain information in conjunction with other team members inside the department (and relies heavily on colocation) but is of little use outside it. Finally, the typical user also has access to some kind of communication capability, typically electronic mail. This facilitates interdepartmental, intersite and even intercompany communication. |
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IT solutions are reinforcing functional and geographical boundaries and the lack of use by senior management emphasizes any bureaucracy. Thus islands of information develop, as illustrated in Fig. 2. |
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In an attempt to break down these barriers, groupware is emerging to build additional capabilities around electronic mail and link personal productivity tools to support collaboration and information sharing between individuals, e.g., workflow, discussion forums, etc. This can provide a more structured way to share information than electronic mail. At the moment within the pharmaceuticals arena, groupware has been implemented, primarily, as a departmental system and has not been widely deployed across geographical boundaries. |
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Fortunately, some progress is being made to provide IT support for information sharing during the drug development process. Document man- |
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