Fault tolerance is the missing ingredient in the pharma drive for process information systems

Within five years, fault-tolerant computing will be as fundamental to pharmaceutical manufacturing as comparative databases are to pharmaceutical research. That would be a reckless prediction if it wasn't based on a concrete reality looming in the industry's immediate future: the need for electronic batch record (EBR) and process analytical technology (PAT) information systems. EBR needs fault tolerant computing's continuous availability because even one system crash breaks the electronic record chain. For PAT to provide real-time quality control, its underlying computing infrastructure must be continuously available. According to this white paper by Stratus Technologies, the pharmaceutical industry's need for fault-tolerant computing is rooted in the strict regulatory standards it must maintain.

Another issue for the pharma industry is the inefficiencies in manufacturing -- industry batch failures, for instance, range from 5 to 15 percent compared to the semiconductor industry, which dealt with similar process problems 25 years ago and now has scrap below 1 percent.

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