News & Events

In this section

Instem Acquires Cambridge-Based BioWisdom; Leader in Delivering Healthcare Intelligence Solutions

Acquisition of Leading Bio-Informatics Solutions Company to Strengthen Instem's Early Drug Development Solution Suite

CONSHOHOCKEN, PA - (BUSINESS WIRE) – March 7, 2011 - - Instem, a leading provider of early development software applications, announced today that it has acquired BioWisdom, Ltd (BioWisdom). Based in Cambridge, UK, BioWisdom provides innovative solutions to accelerate access to scientific information for better decision support during product discovery, development and commercialization.

Established in 2000, BioWisdom helps clients to navigate the complex scientific and commercial issues involved in developing successful healthcare products. The company provides a powerful suite of software tools for the acquisition, integration, visualization and high-value analysis of healthcare intelligence from an extensive collection of public and private sources. It allows researchers at companies like AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Abbott to gather information about their targets during program development, find patterns in their research data, and put their own results into a broader scientific context to predict likely outcomes.

This key acquisition significantly enhances and complements Instem’s recently launched Centrus™ solution suite, accelerating their customers' ability to aggregate, analyze and extract knowledge from huge volumes of disparate internal and external data sources, unlocking considerable value from billions of dollars of prior research investments. Instem’s deeply entrenched position and global reach in the Life Sciences industry will enable increased market penetration and enhanced support of the BioWisdom
solutions and services. Instem clients will have access to a broader spectrum of solutions, realizing higher
value from their technology investments and enabling true enterprise information integration within and beyond early drug development.

“Integrating the BioWisdom products into Instem’s Centrus suite will significantly accelerate the introduction of new capabilities that focus on data integration, visual analytics and knowledge extraction,” comments Phil Reason, CEO at Instem. “The BioWisdom products come with many prestigious and highly satisfied clients, which are always a key factor when building market penetration with a solution suite that is unique in the industry.  The talented and complementary BioWisdom team has a very similar outlook, and integrating now with Instem will increase our ability to help clients bring new products to market quickly and cost effectively, while minimizing any possible safety implications.”

Following this acquisition, all of the world’s top 12 pharmaceutical companies and 16 of the top 20 will be Instem clients, as well as thousands of academic and not for profit researchers.  Adding over 50 new clients, Instem will be extending support through their comprehensive Customer Involvement Program which includes a mix of communications and events such as Customer Center Discussion Forums, Special Interest Groups, Webinar series and Instem’s International Conference.

As expressed by a senior contact at a Top 20 Pharmaceutical client, BioWisdom solutions are mining legacy preclinical study reports and including that information within the larger pool of drug development data. Now through a single provider, this acquisition will enable industry to drill down from the study report level data that is being extracted into individual animal/result data within systems such as Provantis and will provide the technology that underpins access to CRO partner and wider industry data. 

Dr. Gordon Baxter, CEO and Founder of BioWisdom commented, “The acquisition of BioWisdom by Instem creates opportunities for both companies in new but closely related markets.  The combined businesses have a fantastic depth of experience across both regulated and non-regulated data environments, which will stimulate the development of new products and services for our pharmaceutical industry customers.  The BioWisdom team has already identified a number of areas where our existing business will be improved by the acquisition and we look forward to working with Instem to create new, compelling solutions for data collection, management and analysis right across the R&D continuum.”

While maintaining responsibility for the success of the BioWisdom business unit and its clients, Dr. Baxter will also take on the new role of Chief Scientific Officer for the Instem group.  In addition to a portfolio of leading bio-informatics products, BioWisdom’s blend of technology and computational biology expertise has delivered a wide array of elegant solutions to some seemingly intractable biology challenges. This capability will be maintained and developed under a focused ‘Instem Scientific’ operating unit.  This will continue to advance Translational Science through consortium projects, content creation, scientific advisement and problem solving.

BioWisdom products will be marketed within Instem’s Centrus™ suite; complementing Instem’s focused capabilities for preclinical study data aggregation and delivery to allow a complete global view of data from discovery to the clinic. Launched in September of 2010, Centrus provides a single, secure environment to access, harmonize and use early drug development information from a variety of sources, including current data acquisition systems, legacy systems, warehouses, partner and contract research applications, to meet the rapidly-expanding needs of life science organizations for data-driven decision making.

During the next several months Instem will be speaking to and visiting clients to further demonstrate the value of the enhanced offerings this acquisition will bring to each of them. Instem has been a leading voice for the harmonization of software solutions and consolidation of mission-critical IT providers within the life sciences and believes organizations around the globe can carry out their essential research more efficiently and cost effectively.

More information about BioWisdom solutions can be found at www.biowisdom.com

About Instem

Instem is a leading supplier of IT applications to the early development healthcare market, delivering compelling solutions for data collection, management and analysis across the R&D continuum. Instem applications are in use by customers worldwide, meeting the rapidly expanding needs of life science and healthcare organizations for data-driven decision making leading to safer, more effective products.

Instem’s portfolio of software solutions increases client productivity by automating study-related processes while offering the unique ability to generate new knowledge through the extraction and harmonization of actionable scientific information.

Instem supports over 400 clients through full service offices in the United States, United Kingdom and China with additional locations in India and a full service distributor based in Japan.

Meeting clients at the intersection of investment & return™.

Press Contacts:

Instem
Gary Mitchell (US HQ)
gary.mitchell@instem.com
Tel: 610-941-0990

Julie Jones (UK HQ)
julie.jones@instem.com
Tel: +44 (0) 1785 825600