Selected sources for competitive intelligence in biopharma
Jinfo Blog

By Yulia Aspinall

Abstract

Demand for different type of information (scientific, clinical, patent, business) can vary in deferent stages of drug development process (discovery, development, marketing). Published information can be collected using variety of online resources.

Item

Competitive Intelligence (CI) can be described as a process of gathering, analysing and interpreting internal and external intelligence on competitors and the competitive environment to guide a company’s strategy. Published information collection and analysis are the essential parts of CI and important in building understanding of the competitive environment and make assumptions for the future. Demand for different type of information (scientific, clinical, patent, business) can vary in deferent stages of drug development process (discovery, development, marketing). Published information can be collected using variety of online resources.

Scientific (biomedical) information is essential for early drug development process andusually comes from journals, books, conference proceedings, databases and other sources, such as PhD theses and scientific reports from professional societies and associations. This type of information can be accessed online from journals, databases such as PubMed and relevant scientific or medical conference websites.

Journal, database and conference aggregator sites also exist and these can help reduce workload, by searching across multiple journals, databases or conferences Some examples of aggregators are:

• Science Direct (journals)
• Dialog (databases)
• Medical Intelligence Solutions (conferences)

Clinical and Regulatory information essential for the development stage, when drug is going through clinical trials and country specific regulatory submission. This type of information can be accessed both free and via subscription. There are a number of free websites containing clinical trials information, the best known example probably being ClinicalTrials.gov. There is only one aggregator dedicated to clinical trials information – Informa's TrialTrove database . Drug databases, such as ADIS also contains clinical trials information.

Regulatory information can be accessed via the FDA website (for the US), EMA (EU), or country specific websites – all of which are usually free. Detailed regulatory information can be accessed through Thomson Reuters' IDRAC database.

Patent and intellectual property information, should be regular monitored to ensure that the company intellectual property (IP) is protected and other company IP is not infringed. This type of information can be found on a number of specific patent databases such as Micropatent, information aggregators including Dialog, or country specific websites such as the UK Patent Office. Whilst governmental and regulatory body sites are generally free, commercial databases often require a fee or subscription. As you evaluate the many sources of information for biopharma CI, it is essential to ensure quality and also consider the features some premium services offer, though there are many valuable sources available freely online as well.

Clinical and Regulatory information can be accessed both free and via subscription. There are a number of free websites containing clinical trials information, the best known example probably being ClinicalTrials.gov. There is only one aggregator dedicated to clinical trials information – Informa's TrialTrove database).

Regulatory information can be accessed via the FDA website (for the US), EMA (EU), or country specific websites – all of which are usually free. Detailed regulatory information can be accessed through Thomson Reuters' IDRAC database (http://www.idrac.com/FrontPage.aspx).

Business and market information can of course be found in an almost infinite number of sites on the web: news sites (eg. FierceBiotech), trade associations such as the ABPI, company websites, drug-specific sites, etc. However, for regulatory reasons, some of the resources are accessible only to healthcare professionals and may require registration.

There are also many business / market information providers that provide databases. These include news databases such as Factiva, drug databases (eg. Pipeline), company (Hoovers), analyst reports (PharmaTell), market reports (Datamonitor) and forecasts (EvaluatePharma), etc. Using aggregators of different databases such as Dialog it Is possible to search across several databases.

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