The Pistoia Alliance, a global, not-for-profit alliance that works to lower barriers to innovation in life sciences R&D, has recently released the latest Unified Data Model (UDM) file format, Version 6, supported by funding from Biovia, Elsevier, GSK, Novartis, and Roche.

V6 offers a stable foundation for the collection and exchange of reaction data and empowers the community to move forward with its adoption.  The aim of the UDM project is to create and publish an open and freely available data format for the storage and exchange of experimental information regarding compound synthesis and testing.

“The UDM is exactly the type of essential project the Pistoia Alliance was formed to work on – it enables internal and external collaboration, and ultimately helps to accelerate innovation and discovery,” commented Dr Steve Arlington, President of The Pistoia Alliance.

The latest update of the UDM looks to primarily improve the semantics and validation of data. This is important in R&D when acronyms and words can be interchanged. Without alignment on terms and data models, major opportunities to see trends or wider patterns are missed. Standardized harmonization of data is especially important as we are seeing increased adoption of AI, and machine and deep learning, which are reliant on high quality data to improve outcomes and predictions.