Case Study: Walter + Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research achieves 65% faster hit discovery and real-time screening insights with TIBCO Software’s Spotfire

WEHI Speeds Drug Discovery With TIBCO Spotfire

Walter + Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI), a leading Australian life‑sciences centre, runs a high‑throughput chemical screening lab that assays more than 350,000 compounds per year. Researchers were overwhelmed by millions of assay results pulled into Excel, a slow, error‑prone process that made it difficult to spot systematic issues and quickly identify promising drug candidates.

WEHI integrated TIBCO Spotfire with its IDBS ActivityBase database (deployed via server‑side processing and Citrix), giving researchers real‑time visual dashboards to map assay data, spot anomalies, and exclude problem wells. The change cut Hit Discovery data processing time by more than 65%, sped candidate identification and handoff to chemists and biologists, increased data reliability through automatic aggregation, and improved reporting and collaboration with partner organisations.

Walter + Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research

Kurt Lackovic

Senior Research Officer