The Problem
Why do life scientists admit to having difficulty staying up-to-date
with external developments that are critical to their research? Today's
ad hoc, manual searching methods of online research are a serious inhibitor
to thorough online research, especially given the time pressures on the
scientist. Online research is further complicated by nomenclature issues
such as those found in gene and protein terminology.
Researchers and R&D managers are concluding that automated support
is needed to help a scientist find the critical, relevant nuggets of information
buried in the growing avalanche of biomedical literature, patents and
special purpose biopharma databases. This conclusion is supported by recent
studies of Web research showing that on average only two search words
are used in a Web query. Further, advanced search capabilities are used
less than 10% of the time. With short queries and very little use of advanced
searching techniques, results are predictably poor. (Source of Web search
study results: "The Problem with Unstructured Data", DM Review,
February 2003.)
In short, doing online research homework and always having a prepared
mind is becoming increasingly difficult and overwhelming.
The Opportunity and the Challenge
Insights gleaned from the biomedical literature and from important science
often hidden in patent applications and grants can be shown to lead to
important R&D project breakthroughs. In the US alone over $28 billion
in new research results are added to the public domain on an annual basis.
Over 5,000 patents and applications are added to USPTO and other patent
offices around the world each week. Hundreds of thousands of knowledge-rich
life sciences articles are published in over 4,000 journals every year.
And many subscription-only databases contain actionable information for
life scientists and R&D project managers. The challenge is to provide
an easy way for the scientist to take advantage of the wealth of relevant
scientific knowledge in both the public domain and in subscription-only
literature and databases
There is a lot more to effective online research than filling in a little
white search box. Learn how Acumenta
software augments the life scientist's online research task and enables
the capture and sharing of scientists' insights within project teams and
across the entire R&D organization.
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