Sarika N Suryawanshi, Irin Sarah Jacob, Archana Singh, Vikas Gautam
Department of Pharmacoinformatics, National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research, Hajipur, Bihar, India.
ABSTRACT
The new age of internet fascinated the world, right from the Google, emails to the facebook. The concept of global village seems real in the era of virtual reality where people communicate with the help of social networking sites. The approach of community based drug discovery outshines the traditional methodology convincing the scientific community to think out of the box and contribute their ideas, methodology, technology etc. with their contemporaries. Along with the medicine networking sites, drug discovery specific networking sites, business networking sites, popular social networking sites like facebook, twitter, MySpace, linked In etc are engaging young scientists. Collaborative drug research is also taking new shape, focusing on neglected diseases and bridging the gap between academia and pharmaceutical industry. The idea of sharing knowledge, research, tools and technology comes with its own pros and cons, which can be taken care of. Blogs, wikis, RSS feeds etc are building the concept of eScience through e-networking, which allows sharing scientific information after proper review. The article discusses a few popular examples of organizations practicing community as well as collaborative drug research. Exchange of knowledge through online webinars, videos etc are also fetching the attention of scientists; moreover, e networking is gaining impetus with easy access to high speed internet services. Computer mediated communication allows several new ways to connect and collaborate within and across professional and geographical boundaries. The era of social networking is revolutionising scientific research like drug discovery, bioinformatics research, chemoinformatics, pharmacogenomics etc. This review article attempts to highlight the contribution of social networking sites to drug discovery as well as discusses the future of eScience on World Wide Web. Read more…
