Open Lab

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: research and passing the baton as an open source ensures that the technology does not limits itself in the thesis paper,” he adds.

Presently, the available financial resources for funding drug research include in-house R&D inputs by drug companies, government funding through publicly funded R&D institutions and promotion funds set up by the government, as well as a special new drug development fund operated by the department of science and technology. However, the present level of R&D is quite low as compared to most of the developed countries. The present level of spend on R&D (about 5% of turnover) is much lower as compared to most of the developed countries (15-20%).

Says PS Ramkumar, co-founder and director, Digital Integrated Health Exchange, although industry has accepted many open source-based products into mainstream, it is more prevalent among academia than the industry. “A hybrid model, wherein the R&D is outsourced by companies to the open source community and the productisation is done by the industry, looks like a win-win from a cost-risk-speed perspective and equitable revenue sharing,” he adds.

On its part, the department of biotechnology (DBT) is doing its bit to promote the open source drug discovery initiative in the country. DBT advisor Madhan Mohan says, “We provide financial support to various institutions for open source software development activities. These resources are made available on their respective websites as well as in the form of mirror sites.”

One such mirror site established at IMT Chandigarh (a CSIR laboratory) provides a large number of software packages to the scientific community all over the globe. Similar mirror sites are being established at CDFD, Hyderabad, IISc, Bangalore, JNU, New Delhi, MKU, Madurai and Pune University, Pune. The super computing facility for bioinformatics activities established at IIT, Delhi has developed several useful softwares like ‘gene to drug,’ made available in open access format.

Analysts claim that open source has to be relevant for the drug companies for research purposes, which is being done at various academic institutions in collaboration with various universities and agencies. The open source should also be available in such a way that it gives the flexibility to access the code, modify it, improve it, and use the software in any way and many more areas to be well defined before accepting open source, explains Sandeep Sinha, industry manager, healthcare practice, Frost & Sullivan, South Asia & Middle East.