Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence (LPBI) Group

Information Innovation and the Power of LPBI Group

Author: Rick Mandahl, MBA

LPBI Group, Business Development Team

 

“Science evolves”[1]. This simple quote from a position paper by William S. Harten[2], eminent database architect, genealogist and entrepreneur describes why he designed a new laboratory process management technology capable of adapting as processes changed. From the notion that the software system must support the science rather than the science being bound to the limitations of predefined rigid systems opened new vistas for exploration, and progress across many process intensive domains and certainly in the realm precision medicine moving into widespread clinical deployment. Science evolves.

Decades earlier Robert R. Johnson, PhD[3] leader of the GE engineering team responsible for computerizing the check processing system for the Bank of America, and in the process delivered technology that changed banking globally.  The initial exploratory endeavor began around 1950 at Stanford Research Institute [aka, SRI International, Menlo Park, CA] to address the exponential expansion of check processing bound by manual methods, thus the need to change a system that was conceived in Venice in 1431, roughly the same era as the invention of the Gutenberg Press. In Project ERMA among other things, developed the human and machine readable alphanumerics still found on every check issued in the world today. The same information could be shared by humans and machines and this realtime translation, realtime information [4] that helped manage the exponential increase in demand for financial services in the post World War Two era.

Technology supporting science, supporting commerce in our era changes centuries established methods.  Do scientific publications today advance science or simply report it? Can we do better?  How far are we beyond Gutenberg today? In 1995, Nicholas Negroponte of MIT’s Media Lab lamented that the FAX machine was barely a step beyond Gutenberg.[5] In the ensuing generation has scientific publishing advanced with the science it reports? LPBI Group thinks not.

What of new innovation in the expanding realm of life sciences? Where are the friction points that may impede progress in rapidly advancing areas of medical sciences – science whose validation rests on rigorous observation and adherence to scientific method, findings vetted by peer review and shared in scholarly journals of learned societies. Are there ways to improve, approaches to help ameliorate the current concern over “research productivity”?

Personal Reflection of an Innovation Case Study

In the early eighties upon returning from a year’s assignment in  France, I looked up a former skiing and climbing partner now Head Coach of the US Ski Team. I had heard that he was working on a new design of racing bicycle handle bars – which from afar seemed quite curious. A visit to his home near Sun Valley  resulted in an astonishing perspective. In a field where just about every innovation had been made for this simple machine, the bicycle, Boone Lennon theorized that aerodynamic improvement – the way a rider sat on the bicycle could deliver improved performance – this insight gained by observing and coaching some of the best ski racers in the world on improving their aerodynamic form in the greatest of alpine ski sports – the Downhill. Those body position principles, so important to a sport where the difference between victory or defeat is measured in hundredths of a second – those principles ought to apply to bicycle racing where on straight away courses with “two equally matched and equipped competitors, the racer with the new bars and improved aerodynamic position will win.”[6] The theory was proven when in 1989 Greg Lemond the first American to win the Tour de France used the new “aero bars” . This second of three Tour de France victories (also 1986 and 1990), was attributed by Mr. Lemond to the final time trial where he outpaced his opponent by eight seconds, the tightest margin in Tour de France history. LeMond’s superior aerodynamics brought him victory[7] – he triumphed where two comparably qualified and equipped competitors had different tools that resulted in different levels of efficiency, thus performance. 

Winning Strategy in the Information Age

In the competitive world of scientific and medical research, where can efficiencies be gained, productivity be improved?

• Containing Information Explosion,
• Combatting Information Obsolescence.

The game changing innovations of LPBI Group offer simple yet profound innovations to help scientists and clinicians advance at the pace they can reasonably pursue because LPBI Group’s products help keep pace with life sciences new research insights and scientific discoveries. LPBI Group  ongoing questions provide answers using curation of current scientific research results. 

• No longer are scientific papers obsolete by the time they are published, rather
• They are living and dynamic repositories of searchable curated knowledge to build upon, while leveraging past established benchmarks.
• Equally qualified and equipped, what investigator, which team might advance faster?
• Access to the best and current information would certainly be of help.
• Access absent enormous subscription cost might help as well.
• Accelerate information access, eliminate exorbitant access cost.

The Founders, The Finders, The Funders. 

To build a team, to create a venture, to have commercial impact, the initial founder(s) must be joined by team members who help build, refine, adapt and change as the initial concept grows to advancing stages of maturity.

The time comes when the greatest intellectual and commercial impact is likely delivered by partners whose established business channels and financial strength enable the full realization of innovation or enabling technology far beyond the operational capacities of the initial team, but exactly according their ultimate vision.

Thus, as LPBI Group grows, we seek to identify and recruit strategic partners to grow, to expand and to merge with a new structure to follow. The global community of scientists indeed all the humankind are the beneficiaries of our endeavors in knowledge creation and dissemination.

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[1] UNIFlow® by UNIConnect White Paper, William S. Harten

[2] Mr. Harten in addition to being founder of UNIConnect, LC, acquired by Sunquest Information Systems is inventor of GEDCOM, the global standard for the exchange of genealogical information.

[3] Robert Royce Johnson, PhD Cal Tech, Leader of Project ERMA, VP of Engineering Emeritus- Burroughs; Professor and Chairman Emeritus Dept of Computer Science, University of Utah College of Engineering. Founder and Managing Partner n-Dimensional Visualization, LLC.

[4] Waves of Change, James L McKenney, Harvard Business School, Harvard Business Press, 1995

[5] Being Digital, Nicholas Negroponte, MIT Medial Lab, Random House 1995

[6] Personal conversations with Daniel “Boone” Lennon, Head Coach Emeritus, US Ski Team and inventor of the Aero Bar for cyclists.

[7] Simon Symthe, “How Greg LeMond’s aero bars revolutionized time trialling”, Cycling, July 9, 2015.