An industry consortium

led by software developer Accelrys, Inc., and composed of Merck & Co. and Abbott Laboratories won the 2009 Bio-IT World Best Practices Award in the category of Knowledge Management.  The consortium was nominated for its outstanding strategic innovation in the pharmaceutical discovery process.  Human Workflows, LLC provided the requirements gathering as well as domain expertise as part of a three-phase approach that included face-to-face meetings to define each entity in terms of attributes, documentation of requirements, and implementation using an agile methodology.  To date the biologics registration system can register six different entity types including:

1. 6 Antibody subtypes
   

2. Non-Antibody Proteins
   

3. DNA Plasmids
   

4. 2 Cell Line Subtypes
   

5. 5 Vaccine Subtypes
   

6. Multiple Component Entities (MCE)
   

The consortium has recently entered a third phase that will add more entity classes including siRNA as well as the ability for users to define their own entities.