Chris asked me to talk about biotech and innovation, so I don’t really have a choice. This is just a preamble, and more will come down the road. Over the years, I have talked a lot about innovation, especially in the life sciences. Earlier today, I started a bit of a discussion on Friendfeed and Twitter when I responded to a tweet by Tim O’Reilly. In a talk at E-Tech, Drew Endy apparently said that big money requirements of biotech are holding it back and one could make biotech innovation more like software and innovate much faster. Admittedly this is absent of context, but I responded to that tweet with one that said that while there is definitely a lot to learn, instruments and people cost money. My focus was actually on the latter. In the world of software, there is some specialization, but skills are more general, while in the life science world there is a lot of specialization of some very highly trained individuals (in fact one could argue that the amount these people get paid is a travesty compared to some other professions).
There are a few things we can learn from the software world; DRY, iterative developments, organizational structure, etc, but biological systems are not perfect, they are not predictable, and most of all, our solutions have a lower margin of error. Whether it’s a drug, a diagnostic, or some kind of therapy, the process of development and associated regulations is always going to take time and it’s always going to throw nasty surprises at us. Biosimulation, protein structure prediction, robotics, improved collaborative tools, there are so many things to look into to make life science R&D faster and more efficient, and less prone to failure, but I find the idea that you can just use software development as a template a little insulting. I have all the respect for Prof. Endy, and I am quite sure he understands the challenges of dealing with biological systems, when we barely understand them. What I worry about is others thinking that you can just turn the dial, adopt many ideas from software and we’ll suddenly get innovative. The past 20 years have seen so much innovation in biology that one could type them out for days, especially in instrumentation and assay technologies.
Anyway, I am rambling. Over the next few weeks, I want to try and write down ways in which we can be innovative, revisiting a lot of the innovation posts and seeing if they still make sense. I am not going to talk about university research necessarily, but more about my thoughts around how we can develop better products faster and cheaper. Hopefully that will lead to more discussion. Please email me your thoughts and ideas (or leave comments here or on Friendfeed)
Innovation, biotech, software, etc
Chris asked me to talk about biotech and innovation, so I don’t really have a choice. This is just a preamble, and more will come down the road. Over the years, I have talked a lot about innovation, especially in the life sciences. Earlier today, I started a bit of a discussion on Friendfeed and Twitter when I responded to a tweet by Tim O’Reilly. In a talk at E-Tech, Drew Endy apparently said that big money requirements of biotech are holding it back and one could make biotech innovation more like software and innovate much faster. Admittedly this is absent of context, but I responded to that tweet with one that said that while there is definitely a lot to learn, instruments and people cost money. My focus was actually on the latter. In the world of software, there is some specialization, but skills are more general, while in the life science world there is a lot of specialization of some very highly trained individuals (in fact one could argue that the amount these people get paid is a travesty compared to some other professions).
There are a few things we can learn from the software world; DRY, iterative developments, organizational structure, etc, but biological systems are not perfect, they are not predictable, and most of all, our solutions have a lower margin of error. Whether it’s a drug, a diagnostic, or some kind of therapy, the process of development and associated regulations is always going to take time and it’s always going to throw nasty surprises at us. Biosimulation, protein structure prediction, robotics, improved collaborative tools, there are so many things to look into to make life science R&D faster and more efficient, and less prone to failure, but I find the idea that you can just use software development as a template a little insulting. I have all the respect for Prof. Endy, and I am quite sure he understands the challenges of dealing with biological systems, when we barely understand them. What I worry about is others thinking that you can just turn the dial, adopt many ideas from software and we’ll suddenly get innovative. The past 20 years have seen so much innovation in biology that one could type them out for days, especially in instrumentation and assay technologies.
Anyway, I am rambling. Over the next few weeks, I want to try and write down ways in which we can be innovative, revisiting a lot of the innovation posts and seeing if they still make sense. I am not going to talk about university research necessarily, but more about my thoughts around how we can develop better products faster and cheaper. Hopefully that will lead to more discussion. Please email me your thoughts and ideas (or leave comments here or on Friendfeed)
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