Decision Capturing for Optimised Knowledge Management in Clinical Development UK

Funded by the AstraZeneca

Project head: Dr Thomas Jackson

Duration: Dec 2005 - November 2008

Description

Nowadays we live in a knowledge economy that relies on the knowledge of employees. This is particularly relevant to the Pharmaceutical industry. We know that AstraZeneca develop and sell drugs and medications, yet what we are really purveying is the knowledge and creativity of the researchers who develop these products, obtain approval, and get them to market. Typically, only one out of 30 new projects results in marketable medication in the pharmaceutical industry. The knowledge the researchers carry from project to project therefore has a direct bearing on profits. A company that can improve the ratio to one in 28 through more rapid and efficient development has a competitive advantage.

The project will increase the organisations competitive advantage through the careful development, education, deployment and training of staff around a specific Knowledge Management and Decision Support tool (that will be built as part of the project) that will aid AZ employees to:

• Record and structure their knowledge and decisions.
• Make informed decisions through interrogating the stored knowledge and decisions
• Provide considered and concise strategic options for internal customers, thus saving them time and above all providing a higher level of scientific accuracy
• In order to be utilised, the tool must be seamlessly part of their working habitat, integrated with their everyday process
• Alongside with technology and business process integration goes a necessary change in knowledge sharing culture that is crucial to give the proposal a sustained success

Publications:
Smith, S., Jackson, T.W., Parsons, T. and Adelmann, H., 'Assessing the Knowledge Sharing Environment Within a Multi-National Pharmaceutical Company', IRMA - Managing Worldwide Operations with Communications with Information Technology, Khosrow-Pour, M, IRMA, Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada, May 2007, pp49-52, ISBN: 978 159904 9298.

Smith, S., Jackson, T.W. and Adelmann, H., 'Concept Clouds: Improving Information Retrieval', Proceedings of the Eighth European Conference on Knowledge Management, Barcelona, Spain, pp982-988, European Conference on Knowledge Management (ECKM2007), Barcelona, Spain. ISBN: 978-1-905305-53-7, Sept 2007, pp931-938, ISBN: 978 1 905305 52 0. [Also on CD-ROM], ISBN: 978 1 905305 5.

Contact:
Thomas Jackson
Department of Information Science
Loughborough University
Loughborough
Leicestershire
LE11 3TU
Email: t.w.jackson@lboro.ac.uk