By Bio-IT World staff
April 29, 2009 | BOSTON – Bio-IT World announced the winners of its fifth annual Best Practices Awards program at a gala dinner last night at the World Trade Center in Boston, site of the 2009 Bio-IT World Conference & Expo.
Among the winners of the peer-reviewed competition, across eight life sciences categories, were: Abbott Laboratories, Amgen, AstraZeneca, the Broad Institute, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Genedata, Genentech, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, National Center for Genome Resources, Vanderbilt University, and Wyeth Research.
The Best Practices Awards Program recognizes academic and industry organizations for outstanding examples of innovation and collaboration in the deployment of technologies, and novel business strategies that will advance drug discovery, biomedical research and clinical trials.
For two days in March, Bio-IT World editors assembled a peer-review panel of 14 expert judges, who reviewed a record 72 submissions from organizations ranging from large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, academic institutions, to niche service providers. Those vigorous discussions produced eight winning entries, along with two discretionary awards – the Judges’ Prize and the Editors Choice Award.
“These annual awards spotlight some of the tools and strategies that are making a difference in the conduct of basic and clinical research, speeding the drug discovery pipeline, and changing the way we generate, share and analyze data and knowledge,” said Kevin Davies, editor in chief of Bio-IT World. “We congratulate the distinguished winners of the 2009 Bio-IT World Best Practices Awards, and hope these outstanding examples of technology innovation and collaboration will drive future discoveries across basic, pharmaceutical and clinical research.”
The full list of the 2009 Bio-IT World Best Practices Awards winners is as follows:
Basic Research: NATIONAL CENTER FOR GENOME RESOURCES: NCGR’s Schizophrenia Genome Project
Clinical Trials Management: GENENTECH: The Clinical Trial Portal. (Nominated by ePharmaSolutions).
Clinical Trials Design: WYETH RESEARCH: Design of adaptive clinical trials using Adaptive Design Explorer. (Nominated by Tessella).
Drug Discovery & Development: AMGEN and GENEDATA: Amgen Lead Discovery Informatics.
IT & Informatics: The BROAD INSTITUTE of MIT and HARVARD: CellProfiler
Knowledge Management: VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY: A computerized, clinically intelligent system to deliver clinical alerts to physicians and their patients improves care and lowers health care costs. (Nominated by ActiveHealth Management).
Knowledge Management, Pharma: MERCK & Co and ABBOTT LABORATORIES: Biological Knowledge Management: Registration, Association, and Sharing. (Nominated by Accelrys).
Translational and Personalized Medicine: GLAXOSMITHKLINE: SÆfty Works: Leveraging Observational data to explore the effects of medicines. (Nominated by ProSanos Corporation).
In addition, the organizers awarded two discretionary awards – the inaugural Judges’ Prize and the Editors’ Choice Award.
Judges’ Prize: CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA: Pediatric Knowledgebase
Choice Award: ASTRAZENECA: Safety Intelligence Program. (Nominated by BioWisdom).
The awards dinner guest speaker was Michael Cariaso, senior scientific consultant for the BioTeam, who described his inspiring sabbatical experience in Thailand and Burma with the One Laptop One Child laptop education program.
The 2009 judging panel included: Sandy Aronson (Harvard Medical School); Ernie Bush (Cambridge Healthtech Associates); Joseph Cerro (Consultant); Kevin Davies (Bio-IT World); Al Doig (CHI Insight Pharma Reports); Stephen Fogelson (Devolotron); Noemi Greyzdorf (IDC); Stan Kachnowski (Health Information and Technology Lab); Jim Kremidas (Quintiles); Phillips Kuhl (Cambridge Healthtech Institute); Alan Louie (Health Industry Insights); Eric Neumann (Clinical Semantics Group); Jerry Schindler (Merck); Deepak Thakkar (SGI); and Bill Van Etten (The BioTeam).
The July/August issue of Bio-IT World will feature complete editorial coverage on the 2009 Best Practices competition, including interviews with and profiles of the award winners. The 2010 Best Practices competition will begin soliciting entries in October 2009.