Bio-IT World Honors Four 2026 Innovative Practices Winning Projects

By Bio-IT World Staff 

April 29, 2026 | Bio-IT World is pleased to announce the 2026 Innovative Practices Award Winners. Prize-winning collaborations came from teams at Arizona State University, Center for Evolution and Medicine, Starfish Storage, CareDx, ASAP Discovery Consortium, Novartis, and Genedata AG.  

Since 2003, Bio-IT World has hosted an elite awards program with the goal of highlighting outstanding examples of how technology innovations and strategic initiatives are being applied to advance life sciences research. The 2026 Innovative Practices Awards winners represent excellence in innovation in the areas of open science, patient advocacy, global data access, and real-world AI. The winning entries include collaborations between Arizona State University with Starfish Storage; CareDx; ASAP Discovery Consortium; and Novartis with Genedata AG.  

“Since 2003, the Bio-IT World Innovative Practices Awards have been our way of shining a spotlight on the brilliant minds using technology to move life sciences forward — and this year's honorees continue that proud tradition. These projects are each advancing critical areas for our progress as a field. It is a true privilege to recognize the passion and ingenuity behind this work, and we congratulate all of our 2026 winners,” said Allison Proffitt, executive editor of Bio-IT World.  

The winners will be honored at Bio-IT World on Thursday, May 21, in both the plenary session and in a dedicated conference session that morning beginning at 10:40 in which winning groups will present the details of their projects.  

Global Access Prize: How ASU Transformed 20 Years of Indigenous Health Imaging Data  
Arizona State University nominated by Starfish Storage 

For over two decades, a Bolivian hospital has collected CT scans of the Tsimane indigenous population as part of Arizona State University’s Tsimane Health and Life History Project, creating a unique longitudinal archive for studying healthy aging. But the archive was functionally unsearchable. Inconsistent Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) metadata across more than 20 years of scanner evolution meant every researcher request required days of manual investigation by ASU’s IT team. ASU’s Center for Evolution and Medicine partnered with Starfish Storage to transform this archive into a self-service, consent-governed knowledge platform. Using metadata-driven virtualization, researchers now discover and access imaging data in minutes instead of weeks. Policy-based access controls enforce Tsimane community consent agreements automatically. The deployment eliminated hours of weekly manual curation that had become unsustainable as collaboration scaled, while enabling dozens of global collaborators to work independently. 

Real World AI Award: Novartis Reimagines CMC with AI Native Data Platform  
Novartis nominated by Genedata AG 

In biopharma, the pressure to demonstrate drug quality continues to rise as regulatory expectations and therapeutic modalities become increasingly complex. Chemical Manufacturing Controls (CMC) remains essential for ensuring product quality and consistency throughout development, yet CMC‑related challenges persist as a leading cause of regulatory delays and non‑approvals. As assessments grow more data‑driven, success increasingly depends on regulatory endpoints supported by strong, connected, and trustworthy data. However, critical information is often scattered across siloed systems and trapped in incompatible document formats. These hurdles underscore the need for organizations to embrace digital technologies and redefine data management, governance, and consumption to improve internal processes and strengthen decision‑making. By implementing an interoperable, AI-native data platform that seamlessly connects data and workflows across modalities and sites, Novartis has transformed its operational model from a document‑centric approach to one focused on data assets, boosting the success of its development programs and accelerating time‑to‑IND submission.   

Open Science Award: Data Sharing for Open Science  
ASAP Discovery Consortium 

The AI-driven Structure-enabled Antiviral Platform (ASAP) is an open-science consortium developing oral, clinic-ready therapeutics for pandemic-potential RNA viruses, including coronaviruses, flaviviruses, and picornaviruses. Funded by NIAID investment, ASAP leverages the cost-efficient COVID Moonshot model to bridge the “preclinical valley of death.” By integrating AI/ML, automated structural biology at Diamond Light Source, the platform has delivered a pre-clinical candidate in 2025, 8 hit to lead candidates and ten resistance-robust targets. ASAP treats all outputs—including structural data, assay protocols, and chemical matter—as “first-class research products” shared via FAIR data repositories (ChEMBL, PDB, Protocols.io, AddGene, Github). Notably, in 2023, the consortium contributed 6% of all new X-ray structures to the Protein Data Bank. A recent community blind challenge with Polaris and OpenADMET further demonstrated the platform’s utility by benchmarking computational methods against real-world lead-optimization data, advancing reproducible, high-impact drug discovery. 

Patient Impact Award: AlloSure Plus  
CareDx 

AlloSure Plus is a CareDx innovation project advancing organ transplant surveillance through the integration of molecular diagnostics, clinical data, and artificial intelligence (AI). The project culminated in the development of an AI-enabled risk-prediction framework that combines AlloSure Kidney donor-derived cell-free DNA (dd-cfDNA) analysis with routinely collected clinical and laboratory parameters to deliver a personalized assessment of kidney allograft rejection risk. Designed to address the long-standing challenge of late and non-specific rejection detection, AlloSure Plus demonstrates how data integration and machine learning can improve the timing, accuracy, and confidence of clinical decision-making. The outcome is a scalable, validated model that supports earlier intervention, reduces reliance on invasive biopsies, and enables more individualized patient management. AlloSure Plus exemplifies how applied AI and real-world clinical data can be translated into actionable insights that improve transplant outcomes and elevate standards of care.