Year: 2014-15

Company: Eli Lilly & Co.

Liaison(s): Andrea Frederick Kenneth Savin

Eli Lilly and Company is a global, research-based
pharmaceutical firm headquartered in Indianapolis,
Indiana. Founded more than 135 years ago, Lilly
is at the forefront of pharmaceutical research and
development of both small molecules and biologics.
Lilly’s portfolio contains products that meet the
medical needs in the therapeutic areas of oncology,
cardiovascular, diabetes, musculoskeletal, neuroscience,
critical care and men’s health. Eli Lilly’s products
are sold in more than 125 countries and include the
blockbuster drugs Evista®, Cymbalta®, Humalog®,
Gemzar® and Cialis®.
The electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) that is
currently utilized by scientists at Lilly Research Labs
(LRL) is highly inefficient. The major issue encountered
by the LRL scientists is an inability to easily capture
and share experimental data in real time in a manner
that is meaningful to them and their colleagues. The
current inefficiencies associated with entering and
locating data has resulted in decreased productivity by
as much as 25% per scientist per day.
Eli Lilly commissioned this TMP project with the
purpose of improving their scientists’ ELN experience.
The scope of the project focused on improving the LRL
scientists’ day to day efficiency. It was hoped that this
improved efficiency would lead to shorter cycle times
in drug discovery research. To accomplish this task,
we provided suggestions to enhance real time data
capture (help improve reproducibility of experiments),
and to streamline the process for how scientists locate
and share data. Our team accomplished this task
through three approaches. First, we conducted primary
market research involving industry and academic key
opinion leaders (KOLs) to ascertain their bottlenecks
and unmet needs. Second, we performed secondary
market research on innovative technologies that could
be adapted to the needs of their scientists. Finally,
we gathered data on our proof-of-concept to explore
how it might be utilized by Lilly scientists. Real
world studies were finally conducted by building and
deploying a prototype of the electronic laboratory
notebook in KGI laboratories.