Bioinformatics brain drain helps consultancies

One analyst refers to bioinformatics having become a "base technology." Others say it has evolved into a commodity. But whatever it's called, that evolution -- a natural process in a maturing industry -- has led increasing numbers of biopharmas and biotechs to slash in-house bioinformatics or to shutter such departments entirely."

Outsourcing and offshoring have contributed to changes under way in bioinformatics. As biology and IT have converged, "the need for specialization goes away," says Alan Louie of IDC's Health Industry Insights.

As the heady days of cracking the human genome gave way to day-to-day work on a plethora of new drug targets, many bioinformaticians have reached a career crossroads, going to work for major consultancies, starting their own such small firms, or switching to academia.

The commoditization of bioinformatics has helped consultancies such as Booz Allen Hamilton beef up their health groups, guiding an expanding list of clients, not just biotechs and biopharmas, but companies focused on proteomics, RNAi, systems biology and related fields.

"Bioinformatics is a service. It's a support structure, and a lot of companies don't quite know how to handle that," says Vivien Bonazzi, who has been a senior associate with Booz Allen's Global Health Group in Rockville, Maryland, since July. She was formerly director of research and development bioinformatics at Invitrogen Corp., with stints also at The Institute for Genomic Research and Celera Genomics.

Like others in bioinformatics, Bonazzi and Martin Leach, also now at Booz Allen, saw the trend toward commoditization unfolding at the same time that outsourcing and offshoring took hold and university programs began to emphasize training in both IT and science.

"There was a glut of informatics people because all of these academic programs popped up," says Leach, who recently left CuraGen Corp., where he was vice president of bioinformatics, for a job as a principal at Booz Allen. The privately held firm, based in McLean, Virginia, has more than 17,000 employees with more than US$3.3 billion in sales annually.

The problem faced in bioinformatics has changed from "how do we generate data, analyze data, collect data, to ... how do we manage it?" says Leach. Knowledge management -- integrating technology into the flow of a company, rather than generating reams of additional data -- is more the priority. Smaller companies struggle with that because of limited resources, but multinationals also face challenges.

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