Bio-IT World Contributed Commentary | KPMG’s CEO Survey found that some of the largest U.S. life sciences companies are sending mixed signals about their commitment to technology and trailing other industries in their plans to adopt cutting edge technologies.

Bio-IT World Brief | Yesterday the National Institutes of Health announced twelve awards totaling $9 million in Fiscal Year 2017 to launch a National Institutes of Health Data Commons Pilot Phase. The NIH Data Commons will be implemented in a four-year pilot phase to explore the feasibility and best practices for making digital objects available through cloud-based collaborative platforms.

Bio-IT World Brief | Seven Bridges today announced that it has been selected by the NIH to support the NIH Data Commons Pilot Phase. The Data Commons Pilot Phase is NIH’s latest effort to accelerate biomedical research through informatics. Seven Bridges will lead a team consisting of Repositive, Elsevier, and the Boston Veterans Affair Research Institute. Together, they are forming a private-public consortium called FAIR4CURES.

Bio-IT World | Vanderbilt University has been biobanking patient specimens since 2007 when Josh Denny launched BioVU. Today, the biobank has nearly 250,000 samples, some of which have associated medical records dating back to the early 1980s. Josh Denny, who leads the All of Us Research Program Data and Research Center, hopes the Precision Medicine Initiative will empower the same kind of studies.

Bio-IT World | Since the onset of targeted drug discovery, a little before the turn of the millennium, intracellular drug targets have primarily been enzymes that catalyze reactions. However, a new type of intracellular drug target—Protein-Protein Interactions—are now expanding the space in which to search for new types of medicines.

Bio-IT World | October featured exciting new, products, and partnerships from around the bio-IT community from innovating companies, organizations, and universities, including 23andMe, Veeva Systems, Edico Genome, and more.

Bio-IT World | The 9^th annual Leaders in Biobanking Congress was held last week in Nashville, Tennessee. The conference featured lectures from prominent experts in the field of diagnostics and biobanking, and included discussions on topics of clinical research and precision medicine, which often go hand in hand. Here are just a few highlights from the program.