Community spirit

MerseyBIO’s eBIO portal is intended to harness the talents of biotechnology professionals and organisations throughout the north-west of England and, ultimately, as far afield as Europe, through the use of online communities. Here, Russell Ratcliff unveils how.

The benefits of the MerseyBIO eBIO portal for the biotechnology industry, and the north-west of England as a whole, are potentially huge. Even as the portal was about to launch, European agencies were monitoring the success of the project, recognising how it could completely transform the biotechnology sector. Through the high functionality provided by the portal, online communities formed around special interests and research work will offer collaboration to a far greater extent than any other former environment.

The biotechnology industry

Biotechnology is a relatively new and dynamic sector, widely recognised as the next wave of the knowledge-driven economy. It harnesses the research excellence that exists in the academic and clinical base to ensure innovations make an impact on the global fight against disease and illness, while also contributing to gross domestic product (GDP) through the creation of new companies and high-value jobs.

The north-west is one of the UK’s top biotechnology clusters. The cluster core represents close to a £1bn contribution to GDP, an annual turnover of £2bn, and employs over 14,000 people.

The cluster is geographically focused on the region’s two major cities: Manchester and Liverpool. Both cities have specialist ‘incubators’ for nurturing high-growth biotechnology companies and these are already showing signs of great success.

The Merseyside life-sciences industry is going from strength to strength, with an expanding start-up community, a flourishing small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) base, and extremely well established bio-manufacturing corporations. The status of the region as a European centre of bio-manufacturing excellence was confirmed by the government’s decision to build the £30m National Bio-manufacturing Centre in Speke, Liverpool.

Merseyside also possesses a significant cluster of academic and clinical life-sciences activity. Its strengths and focus for growth are in infectious diseases, drug interactions and cell signalling. The University of Liverpool possesses one of the largest and most diverse communities of life scientists in the UK, with schools of biological sciences, tropical medicine (the world’s first such institution), medicine and veterinary science.

Identifying MerseyBIO’s target user

MerseyBIO’s target users comprise of 80 companies in Merseyside, of which 70 are SMEs with a turnover of less than £1m in half these cases. The SMEs are often in the start-up phase of their developments. Consequently, they have the potential to become substantially bigger enterprises employing much larger numbers of biotechnology professionals and attracting some of the most talented biotechnology professionals to the region.

The core life-sciences companies that MerseyBIO is targeting to use the eBIO portal include:

Biotechnology;
Pharmaceutical;
Diagnostic;
Other life-science companies that do not fit into the above categories, such as bio-manufacturing.

Even though MerseyBIO is primarily interested in supporting, nurturing and aiding the growth of biotechnology SMEs in the north-west, the site is by no means restricted to this location. The whole of the UK will benefit from collaboration between north-west companies and biotechnology organisations in different parts of the country and, indeed, in some cases, the European Union and beyond.

Support for the eBIO portal

The eBIO portal enjoys the financial and consultative support of a number of high-profile organisations listed below. It is a good example of a public/private initiative to build a research and business application that will bring benefits for both sectors, including attracting private-investor funding.

MerseyBIO – MerseyBIO is leading the development of the life-sciences sector on Merseyside. This is being achieved through commercialisation of the university’s life-science technology, start-up and incubation of new companies, providing assistance to local companies, and developing an infrastructure that supports future growth of the sector. MerseyBIO is funded through the Objective 1 programme for Merseyside and supported by the University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University and the region’s NHS research and development trusts;
Nowgen – Nowgen is a north-west consortium, funded by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and Department of Health, to improve the provision of genetic services to patients. Nowgen is bringing together the region’s leading clinicians and scientists, in collaboration with industry, to develop new tests and ways of delivering improved, more efficient, clinical genetic services;
University of Liverpool – This high-standing institution, with well respected biotechnology credentials, secured public funding for the eBIO portal through:

– The European Regional Development Fund under the Objective 1 Programme for Merseyside,

– The DTI and Department of Health under the North-West Genetic Knowledge Park Programme;

Amaze – Part of the subsidy for development of the solution is through match funding provided by Amaze. Amaze was formed from Liverpool John Moores University approximately ten years ago as part of an incubator programme to see how new forms of media could impact on communications. Amaze’s first major project, Cytofocus, is still used today. It is a digital media library designed to help medical professionals.

Addressing the industry’s business needs

Biotechnology and healthcare are very much knowledge-dependent sectors. Research underpins the success of biotechnology companies, with senior research staff spending 30-40 per cent of their time searching for information. The ability to locate key papers and documents stored across disparate repositories and in multiple formats is therefore of crucial significance.

The time resource of senior staff members is just one consideration. More important is the nature of the biotechnology industry itself. Competitive positions regarding research and development are subject to constant change. A newly published piece of research by a competitor can make a company’s research redundant overnight. Alternatively, a breakthrough could see a company racing to patent its new research and find potential business partners.

The position encountered by companies in this sector is more pressing because the vast majority of biotechnology companies are classed as SMEs. As previously mentioned, 50 per cent of SMEs in Merseyside currently have turnovers of less than £1m. This means the ability to research more effectively and within quicker timescales, taking the business opportunities afforded by months and years of research, can be the difference between survival and significant growth.

Specifying business objectives and facilities

The objectives and facilities detailed by MerseyBIO are a response to the current lack of resources and company-support infrastructure. The eBIO community-based portal addresses these issues, providing facilities that will enable biotechnology companies to:
Be aware of the needs of large pharmaceutical companies, for example, research collaborations;
Be aware of competitors and potential collaborators in the UK and globally;
Develop, record and learn from collaborators through discussion, mutual information exchange, project design, formal agreement, and project management and review;
Transact specialised collaborations that require joint access and secure management of data repositories;
Keep up to date with the latest scientific developments;
Keep up to date with public opinion relevant to their business;
Obtain timely information on relevant regulatory approvals requirements (such as medical devices directives) and integrate the implications of these into project planning and partner-selection processes;
Identify and rectify skills gaps in their businesses or seize opportunities to co-opt external expertise (such as that demonstrated in university research groups) into their activities;
Locate and utilise cost-effective professional support.

Taking the first steps

The eBIO portal is a significant investment and a great undertaking in terms of the combined efforts of MerseyBIO and its partners. To assess the viability of the project, and to ensure its success, MerseyBIO embarked on a pilot project.

The project was for St Mary’s Hospital in Manchester. It used unique infrastructure software to form a conceptual and contextual understanding of information held within the organisation. This enabled staff to cross-reference genetic characteristics and make quicker diagnoses. It also saved them time because instead of using the web, which is a slow, inefficient method of finding information, they had rapid, real-time access to critical information. The pilot provided the blueprint for information sharing that characterises the eBIO portal, including:

Posting comments on a whiteboard;
Creating a set of personal bookmarks (with appropriate sectioning);
Submitting new documents to the community.

The project’s triumph led to the conclusion that a community-based portal that fosters collaboration has a real chance of success.

The importance of collaboration

The success of the portal depends on collaboration between biotechnology companies (multinational and start-up), universities and associated professions (from medical researchers to clinical-trial-management professionals to nurses). It also depends on the business skills of investors, manufacturers, marketing professionals and distribution, owing to the high cost of research and development processes. Collaboration is essential because no one organisation can provide the skills and resources needed to bring a product to market successfully. The industry relies on co-operation, strong relationships and interaction. The eBIO portal, and its community-based approach to collaboration online, reflects this.

Looking at the solution

A range of services will be offered via the portal to help meet the aims of online communities and the needs of users.

The collaborative environment, encompassing online conferences, specialist user-group areas and information repositories will also include: information sources, such as online journals, event listings and other biotechnology sites, for easy access by users.

The MerseyBIO technology personalises the service by dynamically forming an understanding of information and delivering highly pertinent content to users automatically and in real-time. There are research assistants or online agents that proactively find information based on a user’s profile and requirements. The more users utilise the portal, the more comprehensive their profile becomes. They can then be alerted to new information that is likely to be of interest.

The ability for users to author and upload their own content will make the site an even richer source of information. All content will be updated within specified templates, ensuring a consistent look and feel throughout the site and reducing the amount of time it takes to either add or update information.

This type of capability is usually only available to large businesses. But the eBIO community allows small businesses, organisations and individuals to have the same advantages in an affordable way.

Assessing the return on investment

The MerseyBIO eBIO portal was launched in March 2004, so it is not yet possible to detail the benefits it will undoubtedly afford the north-west biotechnology community. However, it is hoped that Merseyside and north-west biotechnology professionals, universities and companies won’t be the only ones to benefit from the project in terms of:

Growth;
Attracting investment from outside organisations;
Making the north-west a place that biotechnology professionals and companies will want to relocate to because of the strength of the biotechnology industry in the region;
Enhancing the north-west’s good reputation in the life-sciences industry.

It is also hoped that the project will:

Lead to higher demand in recruitment;
Generate growth for associated industries and sectors that may provide services for biotechnology companies, such as legal, accountancy and marketing firms;
Encourage collaboration, with 20 communities, comprising 20-30 core users, expected to utilise the eBIO portal over the next year.

Collaboration, facilitated by the portal, will form a crucial part of a lot of research, and provide biotechnology products and services that will improve the lives and environments of people in the north-west, the UK and around the world.

Even at this early stage in the life of the eBIO portal, MerseyBIO has been approached by European agencies, keen to see how it is approaching the project. If the best form of flattery is imitation, then the eBIO portal may well be on the way to success as regional, national and European government agencies consider building their own biotechnology portals.

Russell Ratcliff is eBIO portal project manager at Amaze. He can be contacted at r.ratcliff@amaze.com.