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TCS eyeing life sciences sector
By agencies
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Tuesday, 23 August 2005, 19:30 IST
HYDERABAD: IndiaÂ’s largest software services company Tata Consultancy Services Limited (TCS) is eyeing the growing opportunity in life sciences area, particularly focusing on drug discovery related technology and custom software development for diagnostics.
The Executive Vice-President of TCS and Head of Advanced Technology Center, Dr M. Vidyasagar said that large diagnostic solutions providers are seeking ways to simplify their analytics processes and make their task of interpreting data easier.
This can be best addressed by custom-developed software that pro-actively detects problem areas and suggests them how to go about.
Dr Vidyasagar, refraining from naming companies that would be interested in such solutions, said that there is a large market out there.
"We are in parleys with some diagnostics companies that require technology to streamline their diagnostic process."
The technology laboratory addresses three main streams relating to security, life sciences R&D and Open Source Indian Language interface.
Referring to the drug discovery related initiative, Dr Vidyasagar said: "This helps target identification and validation of during drug research. It leverages the bio-suite, bio-clusters and database tools developed by TCS.
These new set of tools also enable us to provide customized software solutions for diagnostics companies."
The life sciences sector is a new growth engine at TCS that provides the entire gamut of offerings spanning genomic and proteomics, database integration, drug discovery and preventive healthcare.
Unlike certain areas of science where there is predictability, the area of drug discovery is by chance.
In fact, it is difficult to predict the outcome of the effort one takes for address a drug molecule.
This is interesting as the technology and tools developed by TCS help cut down on the process and overall costs, since the drugs thus generated can be narrowed down to less number of target groups, Dr Vidyasagar said.