Biomix Network Ltd is in talks with a number of Indian and MNC pharma companies and hospitals for marketing its AIKAT range of drug discovery, clinical trial (CRO) and telemedicine software. The company is all set to sell its clinical trials and telemedicine software and license its drug discovery software. Biomix has provided the domain knowledge for the AIKAT software, whereas it has been developed by Zenzar Technologies, an RPG Group company. "The software will be totally tailor made as per the research requirements of the company. Therefore the cost of the software is negotiable," Dr. Pawan Saharan, Founder Chairman and chief executive, Biomix.

AIKAT has a Brain Box, which has Artificial Intelligence based neutral networks/ algorithms for crunching entire spectrum of new drug discovery & clinical trials through a Virtual R&D & Virtual Specialty Hospital. Here there is provision to do R&D on a virtual basis in the basic drug discovery, right from identification of lead molecule stage for a specific first line therapy for a specific disease. "This virtual R&D for drug discovery is estimated to save $350 million and 8 years drug discovery R&D time of a company," said Dr. Saharan.

To execute its BPO services in this space the company has developed a Virtual Specialty Hospital, an intelligent network of super specialist doctors, hospitals and pharma MNC that provides Virtual R&D platform and other bioinformatics services for pharmaceutical MNC.

Artificial Intelligence based highly interactive engine maneuvers frame-based biological events in a very high number crunching to bring out a desired result which not only can be tested in the laboratory, but also has a large pool of references from the peer-reviewed first rate scientific journals based on real time online intelligent search. CRO conducts Clinical studies and trials based on US FDA requirement and crunches the time period in the total drug discovery and launch of new molecules / products.

Global Health Sciences Director of Ernst & Young, Donn Szaro, in its 2002 report, said that even though the drugs developed for 1980s is more or less the same compared with the drugs been developed in 1990s, still the cost of R&D in the 90s has risen three fold compared to the 80s. Szaro compares this rise in the R&D cost to the strict policing from US FDA in the 90s than to 80s.

"AIKAT drug discovery software has been built, taking into consideration the requirements of US FDA. Therefore the researcher will be researching as per the FDA guidelines. Besides, many repetitions and procedures could be checked and corrected virtually itself without having to repeat everything manually," said Dr. Saharan. Furthermore, Biomix has plans to improve the efficiency and speed of the software. For this it is undergoing discussions with Industrial Business Machines {IBM} and Sun Microsystems for the supply of their high end computing machines, which will be utilized at improving the quality of its existing Artificial Intelligence-based Knowledge Acquisition Tool {AIKAT} range of software for drug discovery, clinical trials and telemedicine.

"We are in talks with IBM to procure their AS 400-837 series hardware. We are also in talks with Sun Microsystems for similar high computing and number crunching machines," said Dr. Saharan. "These machines cost a few million dollars and we will be procuring the product at about 80-85 per cent of the total cost of the product," he said. In this regard, Dr. Saharan has already held discussions with Richard Birney, vice president, corporate development and venture fund, IBM and Gerry Lee, Corporate Head, Sun Microsystems.