Los Angeles, Feb 5 (IANS) Infosys Technologies and San Francisco-based Elan Pharmaceuticals Thursday formally announced a partnership agreement under which the Indian software giant will design and implement a new research informatics system (RISe) for the latter.

A joint statement here said the new informatics system will help Elan Pharmaceuticals, a leading biotechnology company, accelerate its research by leveraging Infosys' intellectual property in this field.

No financial details of the deal were announced.

'We are confident that partnering and collaborating with Infosys will create a comprehensive informatics platform for our discovery research needs,'' Ajay Shah, director (research informatics at Elan Pharmaceuticals, was quoted as saying.

'We selected Infosys after a competitive proof-of-concept phase during which they fully established their credentials and investments in this changing field of discovery research, and demonstrated flexibility and maturity in terms of rapid application development using agile and scrum methodologies.

'With Infosys' solution and engagement model, Elan will be able to lower costs for scientific operation and facilitate innovation,'' added Shah.

The new research informatics to be designed by Infosys will open novel ways for Elan Pharmaceuticals to unlock disparate data spread across its in-house research labs and other commercial or public sources for its research needs.

This will also pave the way to a customized registry, and inventory and a workflow management system for biological entities, the statement said. With the help of the new informatics system, Elan and its research partners will raise their research output by efficient selection of drugs or biologics.

It will also reduce time spent on registering and experimenting with bio-entities and reduce chances of later failure. Under the agreement, Infosys will retain ownership of co-developed IP as part of the implementation.

'Elan's vision to create a scalable research informatics system for scientists to collaborate better, dovetails perfectly with our investments in solutions that improve scientific innovation and our efforts to streamline discovery research,'' said R. Arun Kumar, head of Infosys' Global Life Sciences Practice, in the statement.