Lecture # 4 (Part 2) - When Making a Database of Private and Company-Strategic Information Available to the Public Can Be Good

Lecture # 4 -  When Making a Database of Private and Company-Strategic Information Available to the Public Can Be Good

Question 1: What is your first reaction to Glaxo’s approach to finding a cure for malaria? Is it a legitimate initiative or simply a smoke-and-mirrors marketing ploy to get the public to believe that it cares about so-called neglected diseases in third-world countries?

Glaxo’s approach is a very intelligent way to collect information from huge population. By tapping the minds of many, it creates value to the company and society. And people are passionate about being in the community, so will willingly contribute. Although it looks like being “exploited” by the company, but if it is used in a proper way to benefits the community in the end, I find that it is a good approach.

I think it is legitimate because it was very transparent so people already would be able to self-govern and be accountable to one another.  The only risk that may arise is the intellectual property rights and which party should have ownership of the resulting content built. Company can have a contract with participants which gives IP rights to the company, or in some contracts, certain users can retain IP rights. So as long as everybody is doing what is right and have structures for shared contribution, the risk will be reduced. However, there could be company exploiting this method to steal people’s idea without respecting the IP rights. Therefore, challenges still exist as there were lacking of laws to protect and distributing ownership of ideas of users. Thus legal risk do exists.

Question 2: What role could a social media tool like Facebook play in supporting this initiative? What information could Glaxo and the volunteer researchers share on Facebook to speed up the process of finding a cure for malaria?

Social media serve as a tool for business to engage consumers, fans and followers, encouraging a two-way conversation, that speed up the information exchange process. Facebook has been used widely by everyone around the world, and consumer have time and desire to be involved on a much deeper level in Facebook. The collective, thoughtful engagement in Facebook generates powerful results as it is where the consumers contribute their input or ideas in Facebook. It helps to connect your customer, and obtaining valuable feedback from them. Facebook can pass the messages to an abundant amount of crowd, at anywhere and anytime, without cost.

Glaxo can share in Facebook, the 13500 compounds that may be capable of inhibiting the parasite that causes malaria. Glaxo can showcase previous trial research and other relevant information about malaria. Researchers from all over the world can also use Glaxo’s intellectual property to move through the tedious and long trial-and-error process in search of the cure for malaria.

Question 3: Search the Web and find at least two sites at which you can participate in “saving the world” through some sort of crowdsourcing initiative. What sites did you find? Who sponsors the sites? What is the “save the world” focus?

Crowdsourcing is the practice of harnessing collaboration--internally or externally--to solve problems, attain innovation, and efficiency on many different levels across various industries.

·         https://www.khanacademy.org/

Khan Academy is a non-profit organization founded by educational entrepreneur Salman Khan and has its mission to provide a world-class education to anyone for free. It is relying on volunteers to subtitle into the widely spoken languages of the world Khan Academy's substantial collection of educational videos on subjects ranging from math to art history.

·         http://seeclickfix.com/

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SeeClickFix is a web tool that allows citizens to report non-emergency neighborhood issues, which are communicated to local government, as a form of community activism. It has an associated free mobile phone application. The site allows for anonymity of reporting as a way to encourage more people to report issues, hoping for transparency that keeps civic agencies accountable. Ben Berkowitz, one of the founders, says that what sets SeeClickFix apart from other hyperlocal sites is that it can foster interaction among government, news media and residents. The site aims not only to hold government accountable, but to facilitate community volunteering. The tool has also been made into an iPhone App, which combines GPS tracking and the iPhone's built-in camera to allow users to report issues from their mobile phones. The site contains a widget generator that provides code for creating customized displays to embed on external sites. The text widget displays a list of reported issues within the defined area, and the map widget displays them spatially using Google Maps software.

Question 4: What role can analytics play in facilitating this type of research? What “intelligence” would be important to capture and share with everyone? What sort of information regarding the 13,500 available compounds could be displayed in a digital dashboard?

Analytics is the science of fact-based decision making. Analytics is a growing field of study, research, and career opportunities that focuses on the integrated of technology tool and statistical techniques to create real-time, high-quality, fact-based business intelligence in support of decision making. Business intelligence is the component of overall field of analytics. The collective information from business intelligence will become the input for analytics to analyse various relationship within the information, and in the end generate accurate findings that help us to make decision.

In Glaxo’s research, analytics is very important, because the volunteers will provide information about their past experience, or knowledge on which compound may be possible to cure malaria. After gathering all information from all volunteers, we need to perform information processing. Then, online analytical processing can be done to manipulating the information to support decision making.

In this research for example, the intelligence is “what new drugs can be used to kill the malaria bacteria”, “which compound is most effective to kill the malaria bacteria”, “what compound can serve as secondary cure for malaria disease”, etc.

Information that can be displayed in digital dashboard include the CA number for each chemical compound, different type mixture compound, dosage of compound used, concentration of chemical used, reaction time, the method, the compound characteristic/ description, lab result, date of trial, customer contact, etc.