The Omidyar Network and others are funding a new start-up called Collaborative Drug Discovery, which has a product to enable scientists to "archive, mine, and collaborate to more effectively develop new drug candidates for commercial and humanitarian markets."

It's interesting at two levels - as a private entity focused on solving global health problems, and as an open-source research approach. The collaboration aspects of the product are that it allows structured collaboration and sharing among dispersed teams to speed innovation. It's applying an open-source model to disease and drug research. They state:

Benefits:
* Capture and organize fragmented and disorganized data.
* Data processing utilities
* Project continuity is maintained when group members leave.
* Collaborate: Test Group A's compounds with Group B's models against Group C's new target.

In addition to this project, Omidyar has a number of other very interesting efforts in its "Open Innovation" investment portfolio, including the Community Patent Project about which I blogged last week.

Technorati tags:
Collaborative Drug Discovery
Omidyar Network