Collaboration Conundrum: How To Share Content In Today's Global Life Sciences Industry

Ten years ago, life sciences companies were largely autonomous. Drug development, research, manufacturing, and marketing were often handled in house. Today, it’s another story. Expiring patents, the rise of generic competition, the growth of more specialized and personalized medicine, and the fall of blockbuster drugs have caused the industry to shift both in its approach to innovation and its approach to operations. These changes have inextricably linked organizations across the value chain. What was once an industry almost solely reliant on internal resources is now made up of broad and heavily interconnected ecosystems of partners, vendors, and global affiliates.

However, while external collaborations have increased at a rapid pace, the systems used to manage these group efforts have lagged behind. Built on aging on-premise client/server platforms, current systems lack the flexibility to enable complex collaboration on a global scale. Because of this, organizations are forced to get by with workarounds that are barely compliant and, worse, unsustainable. Many companies provide VPNs and company laptops to give their partners access to the systems that enable them to work together. Often it takes too long, is too complicated, and is too expensive to give secure access to tens or even hundreds of external collaborators that are now an important part of life sciences teams.