Elsevier, a global leader in research publishing and information analytics, has launched a fully browser-based literature management solution, QUOSA, to help life science companies centralize the process of collecting and sharing scientific information while driving copyright compliance. Accessing the right research can be difficult as it is often scattered across locations and unconsolidated. This is compounded by the fact that many people are currently working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic – with a long-term shift towards more remote working predicted.
QUOSA’s browser-based format tackles this challenge by allowing seamless collaboration in a single, centralized and scalable online library. QUOSA integrates multiple external sources and an organization’s own existing data, allowing for the retrieval of full-text, abstracts and metadata, while saving users time with advanced search and the removal of duplicate results. With these features, QUOSA improves the efficiency of literature surveillance and alert-based literature reviews for medical affairs and pharmacovigilance teams.
According to Heather Desmarais, Owner and Principal Knowledge and Information Management Consultant, HJDesmarais Consulting, QUOSA enables companies to take control and centralize their library, and because it is browser-based, it can be accessed anywhere without needing to be downloaded onto individual computers. QUOSA also aids better collaboration through easy grouping of documents and the ability to share annotations globally.
Designed with the needs of life science companies in mind, QUOSA includes all the tools required for organising, searching, sharing and annotating information.
This supports medical and regulatory affairs teams who need to rapidly respond to queries; medical writers when inserting citations and creating bibliographies through the cite and write capabilities; research and discovery teams working with a large, shared knowledge base; and drug and safety teams focused on post-market surveillance. The browser-based format improves ease of use and consolidates resources into a scalable online library, removing the need for time-consuming software updates. QUOSA also has built-in alert management across multiple databases so alerts can be consolidated and tracked to streamline information gathering. This is essential for pharmacovigilance scientists – allowing them to stay on top of current product, market, and competitive developments, and easily screen and triage literature for adverse events.
According to Thibault Geoui, Senior Director, Discovery Biology, Elsevier, tools like QUOSA are critical during the COVID-19 pandemic as research teams are often dispersed and accessing information without the right tools in place is challenging and time consuming. QUOSA meets even the most demanding scientific management needs and enables seamless use of existing tools such as Embase, PubMed, and others. Consolidating and standardizing literature locations and tools helps life science companies with research efficiency, saves on costs, and streamlines critical regulatory workflows.
QUOSA also provides a view of a company’s article usage and sharing rights to promote copyright compliance, provided a CCC annual copyright license is purchased and integrated. Further updates to QUOSA are also in development, including semantic search and federated search.
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