Bridging the knowledge gap
Jinfo Blog

10th July 2009

By Penny Crossland

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Information professionals in pharmaceutical companies and scientific organizations will be interested to learn about a couple of new services that will make the task of researching for up-to-date and reliable data less onerous. With research departments being downsized or cut altogether, US-based Wolters Kluwer Health (http://www.wkhealth.com) has capitalized on the perceived need for a single, reliable source of business information in the pharmaceutical field by developing inThought (http://www.in-thought.com) The new product is a market research service, which promises up-to-date information, analysis and forecasts from a single source. Customers are able to subscribe to tailored research alerts, a drug pipeline database and receive news on drug development programmes worldwide. Revenue forecasts and research reports on pharmaceutical markets will be of use to business researchers, as well as financial analysts, health care suppliers and drug companies. As well as monitoring more than 3,000 pharmaceutical and biotech companies, the service offers and insight into companies’ R&D programmes and their success or failure rates. How do researchers in the developing world access relevant information? An interesting collaborative project is Research4life (http://www.research4life.org/), whose aim is to reduce the scientific knowledge gap between the developing world and the industrialized countries – in line with the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. It is a public, private partnership between the UN, FAO, WHO, Yale and Cornell Universities and the International Association of STM Publishers and offers libraries online access to academic and peer-reviewed content. As well as providing access to more than 7,500 journals, books and databases, the multi-lingual website also offers full-text articles for downloading. Microsoft is acting as technology partner to this project, at least until 2015, and is hoping to enhance the research facilities of those working in health, environment, agriculture and other life sciences in the developing world. Since Research4Life is a collaborative effort, those with relevant resources are encouraged to add these to the site’s collections.

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