Products : Case Studies : Byk Gulden

Information is good for your health
How Byk Gulden shares information

Byk Gulden (www.byk-gulden.com) is an international researching pharmaceutical company, established in Berlin over 120 years ago. With nearly 30 subsidiaries worldwide, Byk Gulden now has a total of about 6,000 employees.

In this case study, Ruediger Buchkremer examines how professional information, when used efficiently and shared effectively, can enable an organisation such as Byk Gulden to act competitively in the pharmaceutical industry, as well as to achieve new break-throughs in medicine.

For international pharmaceutical company Byk Gulden, the health of patients and the prevention of diseases have the highest priority.

Byk Gulden is currently implementing a corporate intranet, using Lotus Notes and internet technology, with the aim of disseminating information across the organisation, and in doing so finding ways to exploit it in order to gain maximum value for the business as a whole.

Byk Gulden is always investigating ways to manage its knowledge better via the intranet, with the use of data mining and other business tools, and we are faced with the challenge of integrating that knowledge into day-to-day activity.

The principles of searching

The information department's activities include general library services, online search services, document management and training. In the department, online searching through several hundred databases allows us to obtain a broad overview of what is available to complete a request for information from an internal customer. Since each database is indexed slightly differently, understanding the contents can be difficult. Some databases may not even be listed in the indexing. Failing to understand these and other basic principles of online searching can not only become very expensive, but it may result in inaccurate findings.

Whilst many information providers now offer simple search interfaces for end users, these are recommended only for basic day-to-day searches and even then it is advisable to train end users before giving everyone access to costly online databases. It makes no sense to provide a vast amount of information to end users without the appropriate search and retrieval tools, as it inevitably leads to the problem that many people face already - information overload.

Deciding when to search professional online databases when to search the internet

At Byk Gulden, if we only used a standard internet search engine, such as AltaVista or Lycos, to search for the word 'cancer' we would probably get about a million hits, resulting in a lot of useless information. From this initial search we might not obtain results for related terms such as 'neoplasms' or other key terms in the cancer area. In addition we would not obtain results for 'krebs', the German word for cancer.

Compare an internet search to an index search via a professional online service such as Dialog Web. With more accurate hits and more structured information than the internet, it naturally has a higher value because it generally comes from high quality sources. Probably one of the worlds' most under-estimated information sources, Dialog, for example, offers useful tools such as the Company Name Finder, Journal Name Finder or Subset Index Searches (eg Dialindex).

In the information department at Byk Gulden an internet search currently only complements a professional online search. The return on time spent searching is currently a lot higher when using professional online information.

Pharmaceutical companies are not scared of sharing information

Contrary to popular belief, information about competitive intelligence is not the holy grail of a pharmaceutical company. The atmosphere between larger pharmaceutical companies is not as competitive as some people may think, and the information exchange works fairly well. Information managers meet on a regular basis and constantly exchange information(e.g. the PDR - Pharmaceutical Documentation Ring). Whilst they are not exchanging secret corporate strategies, they are sharing experiences and discussing best practice.

Information is good for the patient's health

In a dynamic competitive environment we cannot reply solely on recommendation from other people.

We need to incorporate our own ideas and the ideas of our co-workers. We are investigating ways that we can manage our knowledge into day-to-day activity. The basic premise in pharmaceuticals is that whoever gets the best information first could the first on the market, and could therefore be the first to provide help for waiting patients.

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