**6. Conclusion**

HT screening is a comprehensive process to discover new drug targets using siRNA and drug candidates from small molecule libraries. Statistical evaluation of the assay perform‐ ance is a very critical step in HT screening data analysis. A number of data analysis methods have been developed to correct for plate-to-plate assay variability and systematic errors, and assess assay quality. Statistical analysis is also pivotal in the "hit" selection process from pri‐ mary screens and in the evaluation during confirmatory screens. While some of these meth‐ ods may be intuitively applied using spreadsheet programs (e.g., Microsoft Excel), others may require the development of computer programs using more advanced programming environments (e.g., R, Perl, C++, Java, MATLAB). Besides commercially available compre‐ hensive analysis tools, there are also numerous open-access software packages designed for HT screening data management and analysis for scientist with little or no programming knowledge. A short compilation of freely available analysis tools is listed in Table 3. The growing number of statistical methods will accelerate the discovery of drug candidates with higher confidence.


**Table 3.** Examples of open-access software packages for library management and statistical analysis of HT screening data.
