Biotechgate has grown a lot over the course of the year. In total, the Biotechgate database has over 1.1 million active entries and several millions of records including historical data. Managing this volume of information is challenging, both from a technical point of view as well as being able to find the information you want as quickly and easily as possible. In order to combat this and give Biotechgate users the best experience possible, we base ourselves around continuous improvement and development – particularly when it comes to our database accessibility, usability and the implementation of new search filters and database technology.
In this article, the COO of Venture Valuation and Biotechgate – Jost Renggli – discusses what new features have been implemented both in terms of visual features as well as the more technical back-end that keeps our ever-growing database stable and smooth-running.
Q: Biotechgate has announced the launch of a new software release. What can we expect form the new platform?
Jost Renggli: The most important improvement is certainly the implementation of a new, document-related NoSQL database to provide search results at a much faster rate. In addition, we utilise a system with several scalable servers. This all has not only a positive impact on the performance of the system, but also allowed us to improve the user experience.
Q: What improvements can we expect besides the better search performance?
The new framework also allows us to cache information easier which allowed us to implement additional search capabilities or to improve existing ones. As an example, it is now possible to search for multiple subsectors of different main sector at the same time. And this is not just available for the company search, but also for other sections, such as management and financing rounds.
Q: What is the main challenge when it comes to maintaining such a large database?
The main challenge for us is to keep all the information up-to-date and synchronized on all systems – this on a constantly running environment and several thousand updates every week. Another challenge is the latency between the different systems and databases, especially when doing a query. And last but not least we depend on a stable and scalable server infrastructure.
Q: What additional features and improvements have been implemented from a user’s perspective?
Along with the new release we implemented a new “Financials” section which includes stock data and financial statements for publicly listed companies. In addition, we added some new data points, such as a category in the therapeutics section for “505(b)(2) / Hybrid medicines approval” or dedicated search options for companies active in the discovery, lead optimization or preclinical phase. For some additional areas and data points, we are currently in the process of collecting information and categorizing the records accordingly. As soon as enough information available, we will gradually add additional search options. Furthermore we renamed some of the main sectors and also added more category options.
Q: What are the next Biotechgate projects in the pipeline?
There are various projects planned for the future. A main task is enhancing the Biotechgate API which is available for all users with a site/global license. Secondly, one of the challenges we have is managing all the branch offices and subsidiaries of large, multinational companies. Our plan is to merge them all into a single corporate profile. And finally there is a large list of new data points and sections we would like to implement to further extend the provided data in Biotechgate.
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