BioIT Alliance Blog

Last BioIT Alliance Blog Post from Microsoft

LJrdn — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 16:46:54 GMT

Tomorrow (Thursday, 2/17/2011) we will be announcing some of the final steps in separating the BioIT Alliance from Microsoft. Here is what we’ve done and where the BioIT Alliance is going:

What we’ve done:

The BioIT Alliance is a separate organization, incorporated in the State of Oregon as a non-profit, standards development organization
Is independently funded by the member organizations of the Alliance, receiving no more (or less) funding from Microsoft than other organizations
Moved the BioIT Alliance website from Microsoft hosting to hosting provided by a company called Global Inventures

What we’re doing:

Renaming the Alliance to enhance the appearance of the Alliance as a separate entity
Monthly webinars by member (sponsors & associate) companies – and others – on the state of innovation in Translational Medicine
Starting Working Groups focused on developing standards for moving information from the bedside to the bench

It is an exciting time for the BioIT Alliance, but given that this post is being hosted on a Microsoft property, you understand that this needs to be the last post.

If you are interested in the BioIT Alliance going forward, please visit our website at http://www.bioitalliance.org

BioIT Alliance Conference – October 8 & 9

LJrdn — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:48:01 GMT

The BioIT Alliance Conference is rapidly approaching! Aimed at members of the BioIT Alliance, but open to the general public, the conference is being held at the Microsoft New England Research and Development Campus in Cambridge, MA. It will be held on the afternoon of Thursday, October 8, and the morning of Friday October, 9th.

The conference is FREE and open to anyone (BioIT Alliance members or not), but we need you to register to know how many to plan for!

Conference Schedule:

Day 1 – Thursday, October 8

12:30 – Conference Kick off

1:00pm to 5:00pm – Presentations

Afternoon Speakers:

Les Jordan, Director BioIT Alliance – Directions on the BioIT Alliance
Rebecca Kush, President, CDISC – CDISC in the World of Standards for Medical Research
Daniel Matlis, President, Axendia – The Future of the FDA, Operating in an Electronic World
Michael Stapleton, VP of Corporate Development, CambridgeSoft - Delivering Search Innovation to the Research Industry
Steve Heller, NIST - IUPAC InChi and the BioIT Alliance

5:30 – Reception at the upper floors of the Microsoft New England Research and Development Campus

Day 2 – Friday, October 9

8:30 – Voting on the Member-at-large positions of the BioIT Alliance Board of Directors

(While the conference is open to anyone, voting is restricted to BioIT Alliance member organizations)

Nominees:

· Steve Heller, PhD, NIST

· Michael Stapleton, PhD, CambridgeSoft

· Sean Ekins, PhD, Collaborative Drug Discovery

· Fate Thompson, PhD, iAdvantage Software

9:00am to noon – Presentations

Morning Speakers:

Sasha Paegle, Sr. Research Product Manager, Microsoft - Microsoft Amalga Life Sciences & opportunities for interoperability
Frank Brown, Chief Science Officer, Accelrys - Standards for Scientific Web services to integrate the commercial domain and build “ELN 2.0”
Dave Champagne, VP and GM, Thermo Fisher – Directions on Translational Medicine
Chris Waller, Director, Pre-Competitive Collaborations, Pfizer – The Pistoia Alliance and the BioIT Alliance

12:00pm – Conference Wrap-up

Also note, for those Microsoft Gold Certified Partners, we are encouraging you to attend a pre-conference workshop on the morning of October 8 to discuss Microsoft’s strategy in Life Sciences. Please contact Andrea McGonigle (andremcg@microsoft.com) for more information on that workshop or on becoming a Gold Certified Partner.

Finally, we encourage you again to register for what is promising to be an exciting event! http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032424558

We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

BioIT Alliance in the News

LJrdn — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:02:34 GMT

A number of interesting things to share today on the BioIT Alliance:

1) We are still taking nominations for the BioIT Alliance board of directors, with the elections to be held at the BioIT Alliance meeting in October 8 & 9th. For more info, go to http://www.bioitalliance.org. Send nominations to bita@microsoft.com.

2) The BioIT Alliance is continuing to gain members. To join the BioIT Alliance send an e-mail to bita@microsoft.com

3) We’ve been in the news quite a bit lately – lots of updates, lots of interviews, and a good amount of press. Check out the News!

4) Finally – we will be posting in the next week the action plan for the BioIT Alliance. We’d appreciate your thoughts and comments – watch this space for more information.

Call for Presentations and Nominations

LJrdn — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 12:22:39 GMT

We are today announcing a call for presentations for the first annual 2009 BioIT Alliance Meeting and Conference, where member companies will come together to share best practices and discuss the shared vision of driving collaboration, integration and interoperability among organizations to shorten the time between the discovery of new biological data and its application to human health. The meeting will be held at the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center in Cambridge, Mass., on Oct. 8 and 9.

In addition to the call for Presentations we are also announcing a Call for Nominations to the newly formed Board of Directors.

At the meeting in October members of the BioIT Alliance will be voting for two member at large positions for the Board of Directors.

For presentations, we are particularly looking for:

Examples of collaboration and integration between member companies and technologies
Innovative new technologies or integration methodologies that advance the mission of the BioIT Alliance.

To submit an abstract or nomination, please send them to: bita@microsoft.com

We look forward to seeing everyone in October!

Future direction of the BioIT Alliance

LJrdn — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:01:00 GMT

Microsoft is today announcing some changes to the BioIT Alliance that you will see implemented over the next weeks and months.

First and foremost is the statement that the vision and mission of the BioIT Alliance is unchanged – to drive collaboration, integration, and interoperability amongst organizations in this space in order to shorten the time between discovery of new biological data and the application of that knowledge to human health.

If we think about the problem from a scientist’s point of view: how many different systems do they work with in a single day? How many of those systems (pieces of lab equipment, LIMS, ELN, diagnostics, etc) actually talk to each other?

If we can’t solve that problem in the laboratory, how are we going to push innovations in the lab out to implementation in the hospital, physicians office or into the home?

The vision and mission of the BioIT Alliance is powerful! We’ve already seen some of these collaborations come to fruition, but they need to happen faster and with greater frequency in our drive toward personalized medicine.

In order to implement that vision in an rapid, effective, and efficient fashion, there are a number of changes that Microsoft is implementing to the BioIT Alliance:

We are announcing the formation of a BioIT Alliance Board of Directors to give the BioIT Alliance guidance and direction in order to help it fulfill its vision.
We are announcing a face to face BioIT Alliance Meeting and Conference to be held October 8 & 9 at the Microsoft New England Research and Development campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In addition, as the first member of the BioIT Alliance Board of Directors, Les Jordan from the Microsoft Life Sciences Industry Unit has been appointed Director of the BioIT Alliance in addition to his role as Technology Strategist for the Life Sciences industry.

The initial Board of Directors will be comprised of seven individuals, who will be representatives from vendors, BioPharma industry, and related industry standards boards, with 5 initial members appointed and 2 members-at-large voted on from amongst the current BioIT Alliance member companies.

The initial Board of Directors are composed this way in order to bring a) industry experience, b) a voice of the Alliance members, and c) experience in the formation of standards and collaborative groups in the Life Sciences space to the BioIT Alliance.

Already agreeing to serve on the board of directors are Becky Kush, CEO of CDISC, and Dave Champagne, VP and General Manager of Thermo Fisher Scientific. Discussions are ongoing with others and we’ll be rounding out the board over the next few weeks.

We will also be requesting nominations for 2 member-at-large positions, who will serve as representatives of the member companies of the BioIT Alliance.

The initial charter of the Board of Directors will be to bring structure to the Alliance in order to facilitate the vision and mission of the BioIT Alliance.

In addition, Microsoft will be hosting a BioIT Alliance Meeting and Conference on October 8 & 9 in Cambridge, MA. This meeting will be focused on presenting existing collaborations and integrations between member companies, new and innovative technologies, as well as allowing member companies to elect the member-at-large positions to the Board of Directors.

Exciting times – and we’re looking forward to exciting results!

In the coming days you should watch the BioIT Alliance website for updates and news, including:

Additional details on the structure of the BioIT Alliance.
A call for nominations to the BioIT Alliance Board of Directors from amongst current BioIT Alliance members.
Details on the BioIT Alliance Meeting and Conference in October.
A call for presentations at the BioIT Alliance Meeting and Conference.

Obviously, these are structural changes. The essence of the organization itself remains the same and we want to build upon the successes of the collaborations we’ve seen to date and want to see more in the future.

For more information send an e-mail to bita@microsoft.com

For media inquiries, please send e-mails to mccabec@ruderfinn.com or tedladd@microsoft.com

Microsoft at the Bio IT World Conference in Boston MA - 27-29 April 2009

Rudy Potenzone — Fri, 01 May 2009 08:35:00 GMT

Microsoft was a Platinum Sponsor of the Bio IT World Conference in Boston MA in April 2009.

Microsoft's Health Solutions Group announced the release of Amalga for Life Sciences 2009.

Amalga Life Sciences 2009 was demonstrated at the Microsoft exhibit booth. Paul Mattes gave a seminar on Alamga Life Scineces as part of the Symposium that was well attended and provided an overview of the new product.

For press coverage see: http://www.bio-itworld.com/news/2009/04/28/amalgals.html

Also present in the booth with non-stop acitvity were:

Neudesic - Showed their SharePoint based Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN)

On the Windows Server HPC front, we had several demos and announcements:

Real Time Genomics - showed a pre-release of their upcoming Windows HPC bioinformations solution Slim Search.
Revolution Computing - showed their new release of REvolution R Enterprise on 64-bit Windows HPC
Schrodinger Inc. announced their efforts to port their entire product line to Windows HPC in the coming months.

Bio IT Alliance Luncheon Seminar

I also presented a luncheon seminar as Director of the BioIT Alliance (BITA) from Microsoft, providing an update and a preview of future activities. Over 150 people attended the session showing continuing interest in the Alliance. We are nearing 100 members and over 20 BITA companies were demonstrating their products at this Conference! Each proudly displaying their BITA signs.

Three additional presentations were included. Copies of all the original slides are availalble at the BioIT Alliance site. BITA

Kevin Hebbel of Pfizer described the Pistoia Alliance. See the Pistoia Site.
Professor Carole Gobel of the University of Manchester presented the BioCatalogue project that is cataloging Web Services across the Life Sciences. See www.biocatalogue.com.
Professor Peter Murray-Rust demonstrated the Chem4Word add-in for Word that creates "chemistry zones" in Office documents. It is funded by Microsoft Research and will be made available freely to the community later this year. See details at Peter's blog site:

In closing, I made the observation that these three projects are demonstrating the cooperatioin between Alliance members with customers from Pistoia, adacemic and commercial developers through BioCatalogue, and open science projects like Chem4Word. We are standing at the beginning of a new era of collaboration and interoperability that can only improve the quality and speed of sceintific discovery that was envisioned when the BioIT Alliance was formed in 2006!

Welcome to the BioIT Alliance Weblog

Rudy Potenzone — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Thank you for visiting the BioIT Alliance Weblog.

The BioIT Alliance is a group of organizations working together to realize the potential of IT solutions in improving healthcare, and fostering personalized medicine. It is focused on creating a collaborative group of industry leaders to develop new ways to use technology to help reduce costs, streamline research, and market their products more effectively. The Alliance unites the pharmaceutical, biotech, hardware, and software industries to explore new ways to share complex biomedical data and collaborate among multi-disciplinary teams to speed the pace of discovery in the life sciences.

Life Science companies have unique technical challenges in data integration, collaboration, and knowledge management that cannot be solved by any single organization. The BioIT Alliance brings together science and technology leaders to consider innovative ways to address these challenges by creating small teams of companies to focus on specific information technology (IT) challenges. Working together, Alliance members deliver software proofs-of-concept that demonstrate how IT based on standard Microsoft^® technology can address some of the specific challenges that biotech companies face during the drug discovery process.

The BioIT Alliance was formed in April 2006 by Don Rule of Microsoft and 14 other companies. Today we have over 80 members from around the world and from many different sectors of the BioIT community.

Why this Blog?

As the Director of the BioIT Alliance, I hope to create here a place to share news and views on the happenings around the Community, and with the Members of the Alliance. However, this blog is open to anyone.

For more information about the Alliance or information on joining, see the BioIT Alliance Web Site.

Feel free to contact me with questions or suggestions at rudolphp@microsoft.com.

Rudy Potenzone

Pharma Industry Technology Strategist

Microsoft Corporation