Life science covers a wide swath of scientific study, from aiding our understanding of microorganisms to finding people with the right clinical and demographic profile for a drug trial. Teams who perform this activity require various business software tools to succeed.
These solutions must keep up with business complexity and rapid technological change, handle complex production processes, manage supply chain visibility and compliance, and ensure that data is consistent, accessible, and secure.
Processes
When creating software for life sciences, it’s essential to consider the complex workflows involved. Scientists must often work with data from multiple sources and collaborate to complete research projects. Software solutions for life sciences can help by enabling data sharing and automating processes.
Additionally, life science software can help with data management by providing tools to help with visualization and analysis. This can be very useful for academics with much data to study. Additionally, life science software can increase research speeds by using advanced computational algorithms. As a result, less manual work may be required to complete studies.
Another benefit of life science software is that it can improve experimental reproducibility. This is especially important in the life sciences, where new experimental technologies are being introduced rapidly. Using life science software to automate and standardize data collection, researchers can compare results from different experiments more accurately.
Finally, life science software can track laboratory samples and instrument maintenance schedules. Typically, this type of software is called a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS). LIMS can also support instrument automation and integrate with other lab software systems. Some life science software solutions are cloud-based, which can make them easier to access from different locations. This is particularly useful for research teams collaborating across multiple laboratories.
Data Management
Life science software solutions enhance research, diagnostics, drug discovery, and patient care. They are constantly generating data at high velocity, requiring efficient data management to ensure accuracy and timeliness of analysis.
This type of software can integrate with a variety of other types of software, including laboratory information management systems (LIMS), digital lab notebooks, and e-notebooks that enable scientists to collect biology data from experiments, document management systems, customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, and chemical structure drawing programs. This enables many users to use a more complete and comprehensive data analysis and processing system.
Some life sciences software also provides features that help improve collaboration among laboratories working on similar projects. This can include file-sharing capabilities and remote access so scientists can work on the same project at different locations worldwide. Some life science software also provides analysis tools that can help identify trends or uncover correlations within large datasets.
Other life sciences software is designed to improve the repeatability and reliability of experimental results by reducing human error. It can also provide powerful algorithms that process data faster than humans. These features allow scientists to test more hypotheses and develop better and more effective solutions to underlying medical problems sooner.
Reporting
Many life science software packages provide a system for managing large datasets for easy sharing. These systems also often include several modeling and simulation capabilities that allow scientists to explore biological systems in silico before they invest time and resources into physical experiments.
In general, the science of life sciences is highly experimental. Regarding software development, this can lead to a “publish or perish” mentality, resulting in developers adopting short-term thinking over long-term sustainability and usability goals. Software developers need to understand this mindset and work with scientists to ensure they meet their needs.
A life science software solution with a validation-as-a-service component can significantly reduce the effort and cost of creating, maintaining, and re-validating applications. This can help regulated companies avoid data gaps that might result in costly FDA violations and ensure that their life science software applications are always up-to-date.
The cost of life sciences software solutions varies significantly based on the application’s specific product, features, and scope. Simple single-user solutions may cost several hundred dollars, while larger enterprise-level systems can have a much higher price tag. Most life sciences software vendors offer a range of pricing options tailored to the specific customer’s needs.
Analytics
The analytics aspects of life sciences software solutions provide the power to overcome challenges in data integration and enhance operational efficiency. This type of software enables pharmaceutical and life science companies to deliver products and services with greater accuracy, reduce costs, improve customer experience, maintain compliance and regulatory requirements, and increase productivity.
In addition to reducing the time to collect and analyze data, life sciences software can help scientists improve research speed, accuracy, and the ability to measure correlations more easily. This allows for more thorough, accurate results and enables researchers to find solutions to underlying medical problems sooner than ever.
Similarly, big data analytics can streamline workflows by providing a more efficient way to process and manage third-party information. This enables researchers to make more informed decisions about product development and other business processes by using real-time data to help them identify patterns and trends.
However, the high implementation and subscription/licensing fees associated with advanced analytics solutions in life sciences make them unreasonably costly for small- to medium-sized pharmaceutical, biotechnology, CRO, and healthcare companies with limited budgets. This is one of the major factors that limits their adoption.
