Life science is information rich. While the volume of users will never reach that of a last.fm, I still feel we do not quite understand the value of life science data. Too many vendors believe that the value lies in the data. Given the experiences of the turn of the century, once would think that people would have figured out that the real value lies in the kind of information that is being presented, how it is being presented and how it can be leveraged (I am sure there are other key points, but those are the three that really resonate).
If you are thinking about what your software app, especially web based, can/should do, I suggest listening to this OpenMediaWeb interview with Lucas Gonze of Yahoo. Lucas talks about business opportunities for open systems and data. While the discussion is around multimedia, much of the discussion can be generalized. What would be interesting to explore in the life science context is how we can create an ecosystem that information-based web applications become a viable business. Certainly, the track record of content companies in recent years would suggest that a content-based business is not viable, but then we’ve not really done it the right way either. Of course, it would be nice if the biopharma industry actually wanted to pay for services that allow them to get better information in the research space.
I think that there needs to be some sort of open scientific data tracker (may or may not host the data itself) that can be used by anybody. Something like that would allow data to be verified by some sort of signature, and signed by scientists (by pgp or something), etc... It could have an API for applications that manage the data... Does something like that exist? What are your thoughts?
I think I know what you're getting at. I don't know of any such service, but it will be interesting to see if someone can develop something along those lines.
The trend in science, not a bad one per se, is to find something like the PDB etc and store a data type there. But I really like your proposal, esp in light of the new science commons memo.
Software – the next generation
Life science is information rich. While the volume of users will never reach that of a last.fm, I still feel we do not quite understand the value of life science data. Too many vendors believe that the value lies in the data. Given the experiences of the turn of the century, once would think that people would have figured out that the real value lies in the kind of information that is being presented, how it is being presented and how it can be leveraged (I am sure there are other key points, but those are the three that really resonate).
If you are thinking about what your software app, especially web based, can/should do, I suggest listening to this OpenMediaWeb interview with Lucas Gonze of Yahoo. Lucas talks about business opportunities for open systems and data. While the discussion is around multimedia, much of the discussion can be generalized. What would be interesting to explore in the life science context is how we can create an ecosystem that information-based web applications become a viable business. Certainly, the track record of content companies in recent years would suggest that a content-based business is not viable, but then we’ve not really done it the right way either. Of course, it would be nice if the biopharma industry actually wanted to pay for services that allow them to get better information in the research space.
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