Best Practices in Vivo , in Vitro , in Silico !

Four best practices help ensure a smooth technology shift to computer modeling and simulation for medical device and pharmaceutical organizations. on living organisms as well as cadavers. This led to tremendous innovation, such as the development of modern surgery, which saved many lives. Later in the 19th century, innovators developed in vitro testing, which was much faster than in vivo experiment but did not replace it completely. In these instances, researchers conducted tests and experiments in test tubes and on petri dishes. This led to a new wave of innovations, including the emergence of a large pharmaceutical industry. Today, to maintain the exponential growth of innovation, the medical and pharmaceutical worlds are entering an era in which a growing number of experiments will be done on the computer — known as in silico — to complete and accelerate in vivo and in vitro approaches. This has the potential to revolutionize science and medicine. Some companies still wonder, however, how to navigate through this intimidating transition to a new style or stage of testing. F ollowing early engineering simulation adopters such as the aeronautic, automotive and nuclear industries, bio-medical and pharmaceutical companies have started to widely embrace computer modeling and simulation (CM&S) to accelerate their product development processes and reduce the huge cost of bringing a new drug to market. (That cost could be up to $2 billion U.S.) Yet, some healthcare practitioners and organizations remain hesitant to adopt this unfamiliar approach and technology. Medical history shows that those who embraced true technological revolutions early emerged as new market leaders. Others, including some who were previously dominators, simply disappeared. The medical world experienced this shift a few centuries ago by following the example of Leonardo da Vinci, adopting an in vivo approach to understand how the human body works. In other words, researchers conducted tests and experiments