Logica enables AstraZeneca to deliver new drugs to market, faster, on global scale
Logica's web-enabled Formulogic speeds time-to-market and reduces waste without affecting quality
Logica today announced the successful implementation of its new web-enabled Formulogic system to AstraZeneca, one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies. Logica's innovative WebFormulogic allows AstraZeneca to globalise standards and quality in the formulation of new pharmaceuticals, bringing them to market more rapidly.
New product development is critical to the success of any pharmaceutical company. Delayed product launches can cost upwards of £700,000 per day, significantly impacting the bottom line. WebFormulogic dramatically reduces the time for developing a formulation, improves quality and minimises costly reworks by ensuring that all relevant areas of information are considered, on a global scale.
"This project represents the latest development in a ten-year working relationship between AstraZeneca and Logica. During this time, Formulogic, a trusted and proven solution for our business, has provided us with a vital knowledge management tool for our formulation work in new product development. Logica's new web-enabled version of Formulogic, WebFormulogic, supports us in our objectives to assist our international team collaborating on common projects and processes," comments Dr. Chris Doherty, director, product development, AstraZeneca. "Now, our formulation processes can be deployed globally and several different new product development groups can use it at any one time, providing us with a competitive advantage to bring new drugs to market faster and more efficiently."
WebFormulogic applications are designed to support the business processes and methods used by the formulation teams, including the use of multiple, parallel formulations, experimental design and problem solving. The solution can be configured to use information based on the characteristics of the ingredients, manufacturing processes, ingredients costs and many other parameters. WebFormulogic is also able to assist other industries in the formulation of new types of food and drink, paint, chemicals or oil.
Professor Ray Rowe of AstraZeneca, an industry expert in this field and leader of the PROFITS Special Interest group at the University of Bradford explains: "Expert systems are ideally suited to supporting the formulation process and WebFormulogic has been specifically designed as an easy to use system to enable rapid development of new dosage forms."
"Protecting our customer's investment in building rules and knowledge has always been a top priority in the development of WebFormulogic. Increasingly, new products are developed by teams located throughout the world. This makes us aware of the need to provide easy integration between different systems and processes, and to enable access using intranets," comments Don Valentine, project team leader, Logica.
He continued: "Logica will maintain its lasting relationship with AstraZeneca and work closely to further expand WebFormulogic applications. We will identify core business issues and then build the necessary requirements in the system for AstraZeneca to meet its business objectives."
Logica worked with their key sub-contractor Isocra to develop WebFormulogic using Allegro Common Lisp (ACL) from Franz Inc. WebFormulogic is now available for general release and Logica expects to issue licences to other major pharmaceutical companies in the near future.
About AstraZeneca
AstraZeneca is a major international healthcare business engaged in the research, development, manufacture and marketing of ethical (prescription) pharmaceuticals and the supply of healthcare services. It is one of the top five pharmaceutical companies in the world with healthcare sales of $15.8 billion and leading positions in sales of gastrointestinal, oncology, anaesthesia including pain management, cardiovascular, central nervous system (CNS) and respiratory products.
About PROFITS
PROFITS (PROduct Formulation using InTelligent Software) is a Special Interest at the University of Bradford dedicated to facilitating the beneficial adoption of intelligent software (expert systems, neural and evolutionary computing, data mining) to achieve improvements in product formulation. It is supported by pharmaceutical companies, excipient producers and software suppliers and provides courses, seminars, reports and consultation to its members. It also undertakes research and prototype development (www.brad.ac.uk/acad/profits/website/).
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