The recent article “Tear Down This Firewall: Pharma Scientists Call for a Pre-competitive Approach to Bioinformatics” signals a watershed event in the evolution of commercial bioinformatics industry.
Faced with the dual forces of budget pressures and need to invest or die, pharma is giving itself “permission” to consider economic alternatives to in-house management of bioinformatics data and applications. This could signal the time is right for GenomeQuest and its competitors to show pharma that we have the goods to do it “better, cheaper, and faster” and with more innovation over time than they can do internally.
Of some concern is the idea that public-private funding models where pharma collaborates with publicly funded bioinformatics agencies to solve problems common. I hope these monies go into projects that create opportunities for, and do not compete with private funded enterprises. A vibrant eco-system of commercial informatics tools and service providers will over time innovate more and lower-costs of discovery and pharma industry execs should make sure they have surveyed the commercial landscape before committing their budgets to publicly funded agencies.
