Accelrys, Inc., a leading provider of scientific innovation lifecycle management solutions, has introduced next generation cheminformatics suite Accelrys Insight and Accelrys Insight for Excel, which provides an interactive, collaborative environment for rapid and effective decision-making in drug discovery.

Accelrys Insight and Accelrys Insight for Excel offer research scientists an entirely new way of accessing, visualizing and analyzing data that is locked in disparate locations across internal discovery teams and networked external partners, helping to lower long-standing barriers to bringing innovative therapeutics to market faster and more cost effectively.

“Life sciences organisations today are struggling to bring innovative new drugs to market in part because discovery teams lack the ability to make informed and fast decisions about research projects. Data crucial to drug discovery is often locked in silos and inaccessible, forcing research teams to make decisions based on incomplete, inaccurate and often outdated information,” said Accelrys president and CEO Max Carnecchia. “The launch of Accelrys Insight and Accelrys Insight for Excel raises the bar for scientific decision-making with a modern approach to drug discovery that helps streamline the scientific innovation lifecycle to enable more productive and more innovative drug development.”

With Accelrys Insight, researchers can conduct an end-to-end scientific decision support workflow in a simple and intuitive way across a collaborative scientific project team.

Key capabilities include:

Research scientists can access partners’ critical information in real time, both internally and externally, whether that data is web-based, stored in Accelrys software or that of another vendor. Insight also allows scientists to ask questions that cannot be answered by a single data source, minimizing data silos and ensuring that results produced by one group are immediately available to scientists in another department.

Automated and interactive visual analytics allows researchers to quickly unravel key actionable insights from data, enhancing the decision-making process. Computational experts can publish best practice analytic processes into Insight for automated execution, providing expertise without creating a bottleneck.

Scientists can quickly and accurately collate data into reports and presentations to summarize findings.

Teams can collaborate on the collection, analysis and reporting of project data in real time, sharing knowledge that is critical to making informed decisions across the team. Scientists can load, analyze and visualize data and results and then create a team workspace accessible by colleagues and collaborators.

Through Web user interfaces, Accelrys Insight can be customized to an individual scientist’s preference. Developers also can extend Accelrys Insight through the Accelrys Enterprise Platform to provide specific scientific calculations, new visualizations and tailored reports.

With the addition of Accelrys Insight for Excel to Accelrys’ cheminformatics suite, scientists who use Microsoft Excel spreadsheet software can also increase their productivity. While Excel on its own does not recognize scientific data, Accelrys Insight for Excel provides an add-in that teaches Excel about the molecular data type and extends standard excel functionality with filters and functions that can manipulate that data type. Excel can also be connected to the Accelrys Enterprise Platform, enabling all the functionality from Accelrys Insight, whether developed by Accelrys or within a company, to be published to Excel where appropriate.

“Now more than ever, it is important for life science companies to more effectively leverage data, information and knowledge within their organizations to inform their research and decision-making in real time. Accelrys Insight is a platform approach that should help researchers to more systematically exploit organizational data and knowledge to reduce risk in decision making, improve operational efficiencies and accelerate progress," said Alan S Louie, PhD, research director, IDC Health Insights.

Accelrys Insight and Accelrys Insight for Excel draw from Accelrys’ depth of scientific expertise and leverage Accelrys Enterprise Platform 9.1, the latest release of Accelrys’ open and scientifically aware Platform and the foundation of the company’s scientific innovation lifecycle management software portfolio. Pipeline Pilot, the protocol authoring client for Accelrys Enterprise Platform, allows developers to extend Insight to provide tailored scientific calculations, new visualizations, exports and reports targeted to their specific needs and expertise. The Platform also enables access to a broad set of domain services through the Query Service, which is designed to provide a single consistent way for applications to access data, whether internal or public data that is accessible via a web service.

Accelrys Insight is the next-generation solution for current ISIS, Isentris and Accord users for searching, browsing and visualizing data.