There are approximately 350,000 substances registered for commercial use around the world, presenting a large scale and scientifically complex challenge for regulators involved in chemicals risk management. Overcoming these challenges at a national and international scale requires timely utilisation of all sources of information on hazardous chemicals and their releases into the environment. This work seeks to boost regulatory intelligence through providing fit-for-purpose collaborative information management and chemistry-specialised analytics (i.e., cheminformatics) capabilities at the fingertips of government scientists, advisors and policymakers.
The Australian Regulatory Chemical Informatics Engine (ARChIE) was built from the ground up as a browser-based system on an open-source framework. It is designed with critical regulatory features to meet end-user needs, including an auditable data model, high-volume data extraction utility, regulatory substance list repository, all-purpose chemical prioritisation tool, and embedded cheminformatics functionality such as structural similarity scoring and substructure matching. ARChIE is currently deployed for internal use within the Australian Government Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.
Although still under development, ARChIE currently holds regulatory information for over 240,000 commercial substances. These can be simultaneously curated, maintained and analysed by multiple internal end-users. Powerful list matching capabilities, filter scoring, and implicit read-across provided by cheminformatics-style queries are now used routinely for hazard screening and chemical prioritisation with remarkable tolerance to information gaps.
ARChIE’s applications extend to important roles in identifying substances for risk assessment and prioritising problematic chemicals in waste streams to inform circular economy initiatives. Looking ahead, ARChIE will provide a solid foundation for computer-aided implementation of emerging chemicals management approaches such as informed chemical substitution.