Challenges for info, knowledge management in pharma: PDR

Current challenges facing information and knowledge management in theinternational pharmaceutical industry was the subject of the Pharma Documentation Ring's annual general meeting last month. The 24 drugmakers represented by the PDR account for approximately 60% of total global turnover of prescription drugs.

Although much of the scientific information available on the Internet is of limited usefulness and questionable quality, said PDR president Sandy Mullen (of Bayer AG) in his opening address to the meeting, the challenge to information/knowledge management professionals is to identify the useful sources via text mining and other techniques, and thereby assist their users to find the solutions to the tasks at hand.

Just as the Internet is growing rapidly, he added, so is the quantity of information held in corporate intranets, and therefore improving information literacy is becoming an important knowledge management activity in several PDR companies.