Life sciences companies need to leverage on IT

With increase in global and domestic competition and product patent in place, biotech and pharma companies have to improve their operational efficiency by adopting Sales Force Automation (SFA), an important business application and need adequate controls. Similarly R&D and clinical trials processes that have been technology enabled have to be secured to protect the intellectual property. Now the life sciences business is less about pills and potions and more about information. The new and direct role of IT is to turn intellectual assets to cash. So there is a need for multilevel collaboration between life sciences companies and IT vendors. This kind of partnership will help to address the future issues such as changing business models, new information dependencies, compliance and regulatory issues and shorter time to market felt the Chief Information Officers (CIOs) of leading biopharma and pharma companies at a panel discussion conducted RSA Security in Mumbai in association with Dataquest, a leading IT magazine, where BioSpectrum was knowledge partner for this seminar. RSA Security provides such solutions that address the central requirements of 21 CFR Part 11 like authentication, data integrity, confidentiality, audit trials, non repudiation, access control, unique electronic signatures that identify an individual. Addressing the delegates Ross Wilson of RSA Security said, "21 CFR Part 11 requires procedural controls (notification, training, SOPs, administration) and administrative controls to be put in place by the user in addition to the technical controls."