Insurance coverage for healthcare IT software, to protect healthcare IT companies from damages inflicted by their software

Ah. well they should be protected, with the number of physicians unhappy with the Healthcare IT systems rising. We ll thank goodness patients will also get third party coverage if the software errs.

Chubb Group of Insurance Companies has established the “Healthcare Information Technology” liability insurance to protect Healthcare IT companies.

Over 1,000 companies supply information technology products and services to the healthcare and medical research industries in the US and Canada would be happy to hear that

An integrated liability solution from Chubb can help protect healthcare information technology companies from:

• general and products liability when software or hardware that is defective or contains inaccurate or incomplete information causes or contributes to patient injuries;
• errors and omission liability when a product defect or service deficiency results in economic injury to a customer;
• third-party liability to patients, healthcare providers and others associated with database security breaches; and
• costs incurred to comply with state, federal

Chubb is targeting Healthcare Information Technology Companies providing any of the following services

• Electronic health record system providers
• Clinical decision support system providers
• Telehealth and health information exchanges
• Practice management system providers
• Payor system providers
• Drug discovery firms
• Clinical informatics firms
• Healthcare systems consulting firms

 

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 health care delivery challenges facing health sciences organizations today. Research priorities currently include: artificial intelligence and semantic technology; genomic, genetic and phenotypic data analysis; data mining to support optimization of clinical trials; and predictive algorithms and other technology to advance patient safety and provide advanced decision support at the point of care.Academic institutions interested in collaborating with OHSI in these focus areas should contact OHSI representatives at Oracle http://linkd.in/bXf98c

Oracle starts Oracle Health Sciences Institute (OHSI), in partnership with Sun Labs. This is exiting news and I hope we get to see the participation of Open Source Drug Development Network (OSDD) and initiative by CSIR India earlier supported by Sun Microsystems

22 Million Australian Cloud computing initiative to benefit life science researchers

The Australian Research Collaboration Service (ARCS) www.arcs.org.au has launched its Computer Cloud scheme, a $22 million project funded by the government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy.

More details check http://www.arcs.org.au/index.php/services/cloud-computing

Bob Correll, the chief information officer for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, said his agency is also looking into using cloud computing for its electronic visa system

FDA Webinar Drug Marketing and Advertising Are You Prepared for the Challenges of Social Media?

Since the FDA cracked down on social media marketing and online advertising, drugmakers have been walking on eggshells. A key FDA meeting is scheduled for Nov. 12-13. Read on …

Drug Marketing and Advertising
Are You Prepared for the Challenges of Social Media?
An FDAnews Webinar
Thursday, Nov. 19, 2009 • 11:00 a.m. — 12:30 p.m. EST

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Internet marketing and social media offer powerful new tools to communicate the benefits of your drugs and biologics. But with the FDA a threatening question mark, it’s hard to know how to move forward.

What are the best practices firms can employ while the FDA determines its approach to regulating social media and internet advertising?

Consult the experts.

Dr. Mark DeWyngaert is a leading consultant in drug sales and marketing; he helps drug and biologic makers thread through the FDA maze. Alan Bennett is managing partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Ropes & Gray and has represented clients at the FDA and in Congress on many of the critical issues that affect the pharmaceutical industry. We’ve invited them to spend 90 minutes with you, explaining what the FDA is doing, where it’s heading, and how you can meet your marketing goals — without crossing regulatory boundaries.

In 90 fast-paced minutes, without ever leaving the convenience of your office, you’ll have the opportunity to pick our experts brains — at a cost that’s a fraction of what you’d pay for an on-site consulting visit. They’ll fill you in on key points from the November public meeting and help you prepare for whatever new FDA strategies emerge. Here’s just a taste of this webinar’s agenda:

• The 5 issues DDMAC is citing in enforcement letters
  
• How current regulations and guidance apply to your particular situation
  
• The 3 main types of social media: user-generated content, bookmarking and sharing, and social networking
  
• What YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook, Linked-in and Twitter have in common, and how consumers are using them
  
• The 6 types of adult online consumers
  
• Social media advertising trends
  
• How brand reputation is affected by growing product awareness, patient interaction and portability
  
• Social media tools — which are high risk, which are low risk
  
• Developing an innovative social media monitoring program
  
• Using social media monitoring and text mining to create models and identify consumer trends
  
• And plenty more!

Because this seminar is web-based and totally interactive, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to email all your questions and receive answers before the session ends.

Advertising and marketing cut across many company departments and functions. Dozens in your company may wish to attend. That’s no problem. As many personnel may log on as you like — for one low registration fee. There are no restrictions except that all registrants must be at the same company location.

The FDA has made no bones about plans to step up enforcement, and DDMAC is at the forefront of agency plans. Now is the time to prepare. Make plans now to log on for this one-time-only session.

Who Will Benefit

• Compliance officers
  
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Meet Your Instructor
Dr. Mark DeWyngaert is a managing director in the Life Sciences Advisory Practice at Huron Consulting. Trained as a molecular biologist, he specializes in assisting pharmaceutical manufacturers, biotechnology and medical device companies with identifying and mitigating regulatory risks and valuing intellectual property. As a consultant, he leads teams in the assessment of sales and marketing, medical affairs and clinical development activities, and he assists companies in the redesign of business practices to comply with regulations and standards.

Alan Bennett is managing partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Ropes & Gray and formerly served as co-chair of the firm’s Life Sciences Group. He focuses on legal issues surrounding the development and marketing of medical products and has served as outside counsel to many pharmaceutical and medical device firms. Alan’s practice at Ropes & Gray has involved counseling clients, and representing them at the FDA and in Congress, on many of the critical issues that affect the pharmaceutical industry. He is a recognized expert on issues that arise under the Hatch-Waxman Act, as well as on issues involving pharmaceutical marketing, promotion and education.

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Blogging and complying with FDA and other medical device regulations

Blogging and complying with FDA and other medical device regulations – how to safely generate a corporate blog for a medical device company?

Given that marketing communications for medical device companies are tightly regulated, I wonder how realistic it is for a medical device company to generate a blog. Would love to hear from anyone that has experience or a perspective.

My answers are on Linkedin

http://www.linkedin.com/answers/marketing-sales/search-marketing/MAR_SRC/466277-10937?browseIdx=0&sik=1240994405907&goback=.ama

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 open source ideals. But IT industry has set new benchmarks and proved that open source brings in much needed new ideas and innovation. So hear out loud from none other than chairman and former CEO of Mozilla. The article is published for free at the Mckinsey quarterly

Mitchell comments that Mozilla’s real contribution isn’t just the browser but the model of participation.

In 2005 annual report on Association of American Medical Colleges acknowledged that industry, academic and government researchers can and must work together to remove scientific hurdles in drug development.

For hte uninitaited a look at the article published in Nature Magazine in 2006 with help from Pharma major Eli Lilly-Open source R&D and collaborative drug discovery and other related blogs  MnDoci FuturePundit

And don’t think these are just rants of an overenthusiastic researchers, who doesn’t know the dynamics of business, why because Director-General of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in, India unveiled a USD $34 million plan for Open Source Drug Discovery. CSIR is one of the world’s largest publicly funded R&D organisations 38 laboratories working on a range of subjects from molecular biology to road research to Himalayan bio-resources. The Council has more than 4,000 scientists working for it at these 38 labs.

The January 18 2008 meeting in NewDelhi in India was organized by Knowledge Commons, Delhi Science Forum, IIT Delhi, Red Hat and Sun on Free and Open Source model of knowledge. The highlight of the event was opensource drug development — make sure you read the Opensource India blog by Venkatesh

CSIR’s chief Sameer K. Brahmachari says, he looks for “taare zameen par” (stars on earth, a reference to one of Bollywood’s latest blockbusters), in large numbers

OSDD has the support of Sun Microsystems Inc. Hewlett-Packard, IIT Delhi, Red Hat and Indian corporate houses like TCG Life Sciences.

Related Topics Video: open source drug discovery for neglected diseases from google tech talks , Articles: The Ecconomist -An open-source shot in the arm

If you still think open source has no place in biotechnology and life science its not likely that you would listen to Alexander Graham Bell

“Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than myself.’

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 the LAW as published in Government website

And it clearly states that copyright law takes precedence over deposition into PubMed Central.

What does that mean, when you publish a research paper it usually belongs to the University or the institution that funded the project. ie if you did sign a copyright transfer agreement with your publisher or sponsor of your funding he can deny the article being published in open source website or journal.

The only surprise is that in future based on the new Law the Director of NIH can prevent publication by grant recipients in journals that don’t allow publications of articles into PubMed Central. Aha now thats not good news for scientists and many are not going to welcome it either

But how many would care NIH is not the lone sponsor of grants, and yes certainly none from healthcare/pharma companies would allow their articles be published at open source journals. that questions how helpful the law would become

But certainly Many Many thanks and Happy New Year to  SPARC and the Alliance for Taxpayer Access  for making the first step, and it sure is a big one

There is certainly going to evoke multiple responses from everyone, wired magazine says its bad news for the science publishing industry, who’ve rallied against initiatives such as PRISM, and other open source websites such as PLOS, to preserve the right of journal publishers to charge for access to federally-funded findings. that means they will find their ways

Am certainly one of those not so politically obsessed persons, and I dont know that many politically savvy lab rats. may be few of those working in stem cell research, cloning or any other controversial topics might be. but I am beginning to like Dubya more. Not a bad a move for someone more associated bad grammar

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 safer drugs to market. By bringing the true benefits of outsourcing to the pharmaceutical industry

The San Diego company has raised $ 1.8M of funding from private finanical firms. CEO Kevin Lustig has also been the Co-Founder and Research Direcotr at Kalypsys

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 for health queries, under the name Microsoft HealthVault www.healthvault.com

The organizations that have signed up for HealthVault projects with Microsoft include the American Heart Association, Johnson & Johnson LifeScan, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, the Mayo Clinic and MedStar Health,

Take a look at the  conversation with Peter Neupert VP of Microsoft’s Health Solutions Group about HealthVault  from the Channel9 MSDN

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 Microsoft Office 2007 formats. Equations and special characters cannot be edited and are incompatible with Nature’s own editing and typesetting programs.’

And it’s not just Nature. Try Science, The Lancet and pretty much any ‘mathematics-intensive’ journal in the world and you will hit the same problem

Science and Nature will no longer accept manuscripts written in Microsoft’s Office 2007 suite. because the latest version of Word is no longer compatible with Mathematical Markup Language (MathML), the de facto standard for writing equations in text documents, according to recent notices posted on the Web sites of both Science and Nature journals. In Office 2007, Microsoft’s own Office MathML (OMML) is used for equations.

And it doesnt end there Microsoft and Sun and open world society are up in arms against each other on adoption of Open Source Document Format. Microsoft supports OOXML and Sun supports ODF (Open Document Format alliance)  which also is enjoying widespread support from academia and corporates like Oracle, IBM, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Google

India’s  21-member technical committee decided that India will vote a ‘no’ against Microsoft’s Open Office Extensible Mark Up Language (OOXML) standard at the International Standards Organisation (ISO) in Geneva on September 2.

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

 

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 World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the UN Environmental Programme, and leading science and technology publishers, together with representatives from Cornell and Yale Universities met to officially extend their free access to peer-reviewed journals for many developing world scientists to 2015, in line with the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.

Microsoft will provide new software called the Intelligent Application Gateway 2007 (formally Whale) that will meet increased demand for access to heavily trafficked portals and perform at the standards of today’s most heavily trafficked websites. The system will also enhance security through authentication of users when they log on.

The website that benefit includes open access websites such as   HINARI  Cochrane Library   AGORA and Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE),  

Server Virtualization

Citrix Acquire XenSource to Enter Server and Desktop Virtualization Markets. So whats it has got to do with genetics and bioinformatics , XenSource is the leading provider of enterprise-class virtual infrastructure solutions Originally created by the founders of XenSource at University of Cambridge, the Xen virtualization “engine” is now developed collaboratively by an active open source community.

Scientists were using a 16-node cluster for bioinformatics especially in case of smithman waterman balast, with each node containing a single-core processor. Three years ago, dual-processor nodes became common, so that same scientist needed an 8-node cluster. And then when dual-core became standard, a 4-nodes cluster could take over. With virtualization you can blow it up to many more nodes with no need for any expensive hardware.

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. Publicly available data sets currently in the system include the FDA orphan and approved drugs and small molecule drug discovery data dating back over half a century. These data sets pertain to a diverse group of neglected diseases, including malaria, tuberculosis, African Sleeping Sickness, Chagas Disease and Leishmania.

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 “crowdsourcing” claiming businesses a way to tap into a larger, global community of scientists and R&D exeutives.

Crowdsourcing is a business model in which a company or institution takes a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsources it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call over the Internet. The work is compensated with little or no pay in most cases. However, in a few examples the labor is well-compensated .

Did that made sense it sounds like open source in biotech fields. but hold on your horses, it not that straight forward, remember Nature has published an article about open source in drug discover industry some time back, there is big list of things that makes it a difficult project.

But there is one company that has pulled it off successfully set up by drug giant Eli Lilly in 2001, for its projects Innocentive is one such crowdsourcer, So far, chemicals and life sciences have been the main users of crowdsourcers, offering rewards of up to $1m if they are successful. There are other places , such as Nine Sigma and Yet2.com and Scienteur, offer similar models.

Another firm Procter & Gamble P&G also works with Nine Sigma , YourEncore andYet2.com and Innocentive

Boeing , Dow Chemical , Eli Lilly and Procter & Gamble , Solvay are number of companies that have benefited fro this model ,

IT industry has grown to this level because people were willing to share data and collaborate , ofcourse there is much difference between IT and biological industry . But will scientists from life science industry would do it- So far the answer is No- may in future they might be more open to such needs

Read Related studies Further at
The Value of Openness in Scientific Problem Solving

Can open-source R&D reinvigorate drug research a nature Review

Previous Blogs

Open source in Biotechnology

Online data Sharing for scientists – Will they accept it

Scientific Blogging Names David Houle As Strategic Advisor

NewswireToday – /newswire/ – Folsom, CA, United States, 06/06/2007 – David Houle, media executive responsible for branding MTV, VH1 and CNN Headline News, has joined Science 2.0 start-up ScientificBlogging.com as a strategic advisor to handle marketing and corporate communications.

“The explosive growth of Web 2.0 and blogging has created a lot of content but ScientificBlogging.com has carved out a place for high-level and intellectually stimulating discourse. The community has gone from opening its doors to over 150,000 readers per month in just its third month of private beta. I am excited to help that grow as it goes into its next stages of development.”

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

Errors in DNA database

The exciting news of google or its benefactor investing in genomics companya and google founders earlier enthusiasm to offer its billion dollar power for genomics indutsry, has produced a mixed responses. I agree with Hsiens post that we should welcome the move

I guess its worthwhile to know why its better if google does so , The UK’s national DNA database, which houses 4.1 million records pertaining to evidence of crimes collected by police, has been found to have upwards of 100,000 incorrect records. 

According to theregister.co.uk, the complex relationship between the country’s police force, its National DNA Database Unit and the forensic service along with a lack of checks and balances has left its DNA database with the large amount of corrupted records, causing 26,200 load problems alone

“There’s in the order of 100,000 unreconciled records now,” claims The Register’s source.

Realated posts

GeneticsandHealth

ScienceDirect

NEWS

DNA file on 100,000 innocent children

Video in Laboratory

I had mentioned earlier a number websites, that offer scientific videos

though many researchers have their own restriants when it comes to using technology whetehr it is open source or peer reviewd journal or blogs itself. Perhaps groups was the only social content driven concept that got off the ground when it comes to science and especially life science

but that certainly doesnt seem to deter more people coming up with new site that offer more web2.0 services to scientists

this time the new kid on the blck is http://www.labaction.com another science video sharing website
for more information on similar services and technology see my earlier posts