Oracle starts the Oracle Health Sciences Institute (OHSI), in partnership with Sun Labs

The Institute is focused on research that will accelerate IT innovation to advance personalized medicine and the delivery of safe and effective   treatments and health care services to patients around the globe. OHSI will work in tandem with academic research centers, focusing on a targeted set of research areas fundamental to the R&D and [...]

Shorter Path to drug Discovery share research on failed compounds between companies the new MIT lead approach-

The moment I learned about this new project started by MIT, I could think of only one thing, I want to be part of it.  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have, started a pharmaceutical innovation program  to help drug companies adapt some successful approaches now used in aeronautics, like lean management and information-sharing among rivals. [...]

Succeeding at open-source innovation: An interview with Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker and the USD $34 million Indian Government plan for Opensource Drug Development

Benjamin Franklin said “As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.” – Any one listening ! Leaders and veterans in Biotechnology and Health care research industry may not be welcoming [...]

George Bush Sings Glory to Open Source

The truth behind the new bill signed into law by President Bush on 26 December 2007, which states that the findings of NIH-funded research must be made freely available to the public within one year of publication. But all is not Hunky dory , as more obvious once you go through the complete text of [...]

free web-based LIMS (Laboratory Information Management) System and ELN for Science Research

Your Lab Data is a free web-based LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System), aimed at a typical small molecular biology laboratory. It allows users to manage their chemicals, fridges, freezers, boxes, strains, plasmids or glycerol’s, oligos / primers and much more. Register

Online Drug Discovery Database Launch

Assay Depot is claiming to become an on-demand” drug discovery services. The company is has launched Internet marketplace for the pharmaceutical services industry. By acting as a single point of contact between drug researchers and research service providers, the Assay Depot dramatically improves the efficiency of drug discovery research and, ultimately, helps deliver better and [...]

Microsoft launches Personal Healthcare Intiative -conversation with Peter Neupert VP of Microsoft’s Health Solutions Group about HealthVault

After Google announced the personal genomics and healthcare library intitaitves it is now the turn of Microsoft offering free personal health records on the Web Microsoft announced HealthVault, an online platform where personal electronic health records can be stored. The company’s consumer health offering includes a personal health record, as well as Internet search tailored [...]

Scholarly publishers throws out Microsoft

After PLOS nature its the turn of microsoft, Life science researchers are in no mood to relent to industry’s interests. Microsoft’s latest Word release has caused chaos in scholarly publishing circles. Submit a paper to, the journal Nature in Word 2007, and you will face the following warning: ‘We currently cannot accept files saved in [...]

Laying with the Lions

The following article is one of the best I just came across which talkes about advantages of better collaboration in pharma companies.   The study and articles are on Act Magazine website  

Growing like IT companies- can Biotech do the magic

Information technologies have significantly contributed to the evolution of work over the last fifty years. At first, IT was primarily applied to automate back office, highly repetitive and fairly standardized tasks, such as financial transactions, payroll, and inventory management. Customer self-service was arguably the commercial killer-app of the Web in the ’90s. Now giving way [...]

Microsoft accelerates free access to journals

Information technology company Microsoft will give technical assistance to enhance access to online research for scientists, thats when most of the publishers of scientific journals are fighting against Open Access journals. Take a look at the blog  on the subject by  Greg at nodalpoint Announced at a meeting in Washington in July Representatives from the [...]

Collaborative Drug Discovery

Collaborative Drug Discovery Releases Next Generation Database for Both Private Collaborations and Public Open Access Collaborative Drug Discovery enables scientists to archive, mine, and collaborate to more effectively develop new drug candidates for commercial and humanitarian markets.  The technology enables novel community-based research efforts that become more and more useful as additional participants contribute data. [...]

From science to business

It takes upto to 15 years and multimillion  dollar investments  to patent and market one successful drug for pharmaceutical and biotech industry. Trying to make the sure that the scientists receive the best R&D support possible companies have looked at outsourcing and insourcing and everything else. And the new boy in the buzz world is [...]

Data sharing policies at 10 journals- blog of the week

Heather Piwowar  blogging at ReseacrhRemix made a post on Data sharing policies at 10 selected journals.  general science (Nature and Science), medicine (JAMA and NEJM), oncology (JCO and Cancer), genetics (Human Molecular Genetics and PLoS Computational Biology), and bioinformatics (Bioinformatics and BMC Bioinformatics). she has published a spreadsheet comparing the results at http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pdheCmaT42j62B-a7sx0BRA

DNA DATABASE TO HELP IDENTIFY DISAPPEARED

(May 23, 2007) The head of Chile’s Medical Legal Service (SML), Patricio Bustos, announced this week that his organization would create a DNA database that will be used to help identify the remains of those who were disappeared and murdered during the military regime led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Source Santigao times

Open source and Biology Are we there yet?

one of the lines I heard in past was that scientists had shunned wikis, tagging, and social networks that may be true to some extent .Even the mighty nature network which is read by thousands had a hard time attracting scientists and making sure that they keep the blog at pace. Blogging may be too [...]