Collaborative decision-making in real time

With the vast volume of data generated by the r&d process, it is increasingly important that this should be completely transparent to all those involved in deciding which development routes to pursue and which to eliminate. Often these decisions are based on guesswork or intuition, says Dr Michael Artinger, director, market development - pharmaceutical & biotechnology at eRoom Tech-

nology. 'The decision is not always based on a clear understanding of all the available knowledge,' he says. 'You may have only 75% of the data in front of you, and the remaining 25% might lead you to make a different decision.'

eRoom is a dedicated collaboration solution that enables companies to build a flexible virtual workspace to co-ordinate data across an extended enterprise. Most big pharma companies have r&d centres in a number of countries, carry out clinical trials across multiple sites around the world, and outsource a wide range of services, from r&d through trials to contract manufacture, packing, and sales and marketing. eRoom allows the full or partial participation of all these parties, allowing them to share information, modify documents and engage in real-time meetings on-line. Besides the core collaborative workspace functionality, it also allows the setting up of workflows, supplier scorecarding, version tracking and approvals processes.