Iris Interactive who recently won the UK Market Entry Competition, sponsored by UKTI, and the prestigious 2010 Inspiration award for the "best of the best" ICT innovation in Australia; is taking its innovation global.

Iris Interactive's web-based software helps companies commercialise their products locally, regionally and globally. Iris has successfully entered the US market, already making its mark with customer wins.

Iris Interactive's software addresses a major gap in the market for managing all the product commercialisation activities. It empowers cross-functional teams from R&D, market access, marketing, finance, new product planning, sales and operations to collaborate and track all activities for launching and managing products. Customers achieve faster time to market, higher sales and stronger brands.

Customers from leading bio-pharmaceutical, healthcare and consumer companies report at least 10% reduction in time to market.

Leah Goodman, Director of Portfolio Development at sanofi-aventis comments; "Iris Interactive provides us with a quantitative tool that allows us to make effective resource decisions across business development and lifecycle product management from human resourcing right through to financials."

Iris Interactive's software is applicable to any industry. They are now entering the UK market.

Click here to see Iris Interactive in the Australian British Chamber of Commerce Quarterly E-Magazine

Janaki summaries her rich experience from the conference presentations and case studies from Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices companies.

With several Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices companies moving to mobile devices such as iPads and Tablets, eMarketing is a cost effective and a meaningful way to engage with Physicians and consumers. There are regulatory and legal challenges, which warrant a closer interaction and cross functional collaboration.

The overall trend is that in 2012, over 55% of digital marketers expect more resources to be available to them. While iPad is a clear winner for e-detailing, branded websites are not often visited by physicians. Due to trust issues, 85% of the physicians in the UK do not visit branded websites.

Physician Portals/networks supported by the industry on the other hand are popular. Physician Portals therefore offer the best ROI of any digital channel.

Patient Portals serve as an effective digital channel, with industry partnering more and more with patient networks for data collection, clinical trial recruitment opportunities, gaining knowledge of patient sentiment and early adverse events.

Electronic Continuing Medical Education (eCME) is growing in importance with tightening budgets. A key opportunity for the industry is to provide unbranded eCME to help Physicians keep up-to- date and maintain educations requirements. Co-ordination between CME and eCME is often poor resulting in wasted time and money for companies.

The beauty of the Iris Pharma Product Suite is that it can be precisely configured to help both Pharmaceutical companies and Medical Device companies achieve their particular objectives.

Click here for more details on the Iris Pharma Product Suite

Janaki Joshi came to Australia in 1992 with a single vision: exploit her qualifications as a management accountant and provide for her family. As it happens, things didn't quite work out that way.

Her company, Iris Interactive, now has representation in the European Union, the United States and India, and was awarded a 2010 Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) Inspiration Award for the "best of the best" in ICT Australian innovation

"When I came to Australia I was working for Boots Pharmaceuticals as a management accountant," recalls Ms Joshi. "I realised that the teams there had no software to control how the drugs were developed and marketed - essentially they were flying by the seat of their pants. I thought that I could do something about it."

Iris Interactive provides software to help pharmaceutical and biotech companies facilitate collaboration between colleagues, and in doing so break down silos of development work that typically arise as new therapeutic molecules are created.

Ms Joshi left Boots to start her company in the bedroom of her home. It's a classic "garage" tale, where one person has a technology vision, quits their job, finds some capital and starts building something they truly believe in.

"People thought that I was crazy for taking on something like this," Ms Joshi tells eHealthspace.org from her office in New Jersey, where the company bases its US representation. "But we have succeeded in our goal, which is to bring life-saving medicines to patients faster. That's what gets us all out of bed in the morning."

Iris Interactive has 15 staff in Australia, along with the US representation, and 300 people at a centre in India. However, most of the core software development is still done in Australia.

"Our goal is to help the pharmas bring their products to market faster," she said. "Developing new molecules is a process that can take a decade, and many things can go wrong along the way. We try to help the companies move around some of those road-blocks."

Iris Interactive has a number of big pharma partners, including Novartis, with whom it has had a ten-year long relationship. It also works with other big companies such as Pfizer, Wyeth and Roche.

"We could not have got to where we are without our partners in Australia," Ms Joshi said. "We have representation overseas, and our desire is to see our company go global. Our ultimate goal is to help patients, and we can do that by assisting companies to bring their products to market faster."

She also wants to stake a claim in the burgeoning biotech market. Iris' product works just as well within the biotech circles as it does in the conventional pharma industries.

"We want to connect biotech and pharma," she said. "Because that's where the real innovation is occurring today."

Click here for more details on the Iris Pharma Product Suite