| Votes | By | Price | Discipline | Year Launched |
| Science Exchange | FREE | Interdisciplinary |
Science Exchange provides a digital marketplace and orchestration platform tailored to these needs—enabling companies to discover, purchase, manage and pay for external scientific services and suppliers all via one unified system.
Founded in 2011 by Elizabeth Iorns, Dan Knox and Ryan Abbott following their participation in the Y Combinator accelerator, Science Exchange has grown from an academic collaboration tool into a full-blown enterprise procurement/outsourcing platform for life-sciences organizations.
Core Value Proposition & Platform Features
Science Exchange positions itself as the “first purchasing and supplier orchestration platform for life sciences” that brings buyers and pre-qualified service providers together on one contract basis, automates purchase-to-pay, and simplifies supplier management.
Some of its standout features include:
- Marketplace access: A network of thousands of qualified R&D service providers and CROs allowing buyers to compare, quote and purchase external research.
- Standardised contracting: One master agreement covers multiple suppliers — reducing legal/contracting overhead and speeding project initiation.
- Workflow automation: Tools help automate intake, approvals, purchase orders, invoicing, payment and compliance for external services.
- Supplier orchestration & governance: Science Exchange provides a supplier network that has passed compliance/risk checks, organisations get visibility and control.
For R&D organisations, this translates into faster time to project execution, lower administrative cost, improved compliance, and better alignment between procurement and research functions.
Use Cases & Target Customers
Science Exchange is used by major pharmaceutical businesses, biotech firms, academic core-facilities and government research labs. For example, their platform is cited in case-studies at large pharma companies looking to standardise their external supplier processes.
Typical scenarios include:
- A biotech needing to outsource complex assay development to external labs, with rapid regulatory oversight and cost control.
- A pharma company seeking to standardise global supplier intake across sites and departments, reduce duplicative contracts and integrate spend data.
- A core facility or small CRO wanting to access buyers, streamline quoting & contracting, and scale business through the marketplace.
Strengths & Considerations for Users
Strengths:
- Strong life-sciences industry alignment: Science Exchange is built specifically with pharma/biotech research workflows in mind (not general e-procurement).
- Comprehensive supplier network and standardised contracting reduces procurement friction.
- Workflow automation from intake to payment helps organisations scale external R&D services.
- Governance, compliance and audit-ready features support regulated environments.
Considerations:
- Implementation may require integration with an organisation’s existing procurement, ERP and supplier-management systems—resources needed.
- For smaller academic labs or non-regulated organisations, the full feature set may exceed their needs, simpler platforms could suffice.
- While the marketplace is rich, pricing, supplier quality and response times still depend on external CROs.