A Model-Driven Approach to Analyzing and Capturing Pharmaceutical Research Processes

Overview

Despite year-to-year increases in research and development budgets, the number of successful new chemical entities continues to decline. IBM Research teamed with Bayer HealthCare Research, a leader in the health care and medical products industry, to develop an innovative approach to industrializing drug discovery. The collaboration involved formal modeling of research processes. Business operations models were defined in several joint exercises, formally describing specific research processes. These operations model were transformed into an abstract IT solution model, which was subsequently mapped into runtime components. A prototype system was built and validated, and researchers found that such modeling concepts are aligned with current thinking in pharmaceutical research.