Oracle is certainly on a role, the company has not only released several new web2.0 platform based applications, and already embraced the new technology for its sales ,marketing, customer support and customer outreach programes.

The last week so the launch of the Official facebook and twitter accounts for the Oracle Global Healthscience Business. Today Oracle has announced a slew of new intiatives for its partners, that take advantge of web2.0 to provide training and support.

Oracle twitter at @OracleHealthSci and  newly published Oracle Health Sciences fan page on Facebook. I have to admit despite that fact that I started blogging almost 6 years ago, I still do not have a facebook account. Now I have the best reason to create one.- with a smile , I am sure this time I have the support of my Oragnization to put it to good use.

 At DIA today among other announcements oracle has made is the decision to Focuses on Health Sciences Partner Enablement, Growth, and Accreditation.

At the heart of this new initiatives will be the Oracle Health Sciences Knowledge Zone  for partners and customers to connect with peers, participate in a variety of Web 2.0 networks, and engage in opportunities within Oracle’s healthcare and life sciences ecosystem.

Join the Oracle Health Sciences for Partners Group on Oracle Mix

I might better write an article about selecting the best wine or a travelogue. Because whats so common between the two, they are more like chalk and cheese was thy impression. But Blackberry has a whole page dedicated to pharmaceutical industry on their website. Thinking of which it makes sense to use blackberry than iphone to ensure the security of trial data. Am sure those already supporting iphone would like to disagree. But as long as they have a dedicated page to this industry I am going to be convinced that they are more confidant and commited.

details on BB website
http://na.blackberry.com/eng/solutions/industry/pharmaceutical/

The current economic crisis has only exacerbated an already worrisome situation in the life sciences industry. The industry has already been undergoing reformation to cut costs and improve long-term sustainability for nearly a decade. To help understand the impact on IT, Health Industry Insights, an IDC company, recently conducted a study to identify the most successful software vendors serving the life science market. The top 10 companies, based on enterprise life science software revenue, have been identified and are discussed in a new research document.

Health Industry Insights research reveals that the top 10 life science software vendor list includes both enterprise and specialty vendors. Oracle easily topped the chart in life science revenues, with SAP coming in second. While internal estimates show that Oracle and SAP were virtually tied five years ago, Oracle’s aggressive acquisition strategy has clearly paid big dividends that have helped to drive its success in the life science industry.

To read the complete press release, click here.

Healthcare IT start-up TrialX has launched an application that allows the 4 million to 6 million (and growing) Twitter users to find clinical trials. Users can query (tweet) TrialX using the keywords .

In about a minute, says TrialX, you’ll receive a reply tweet with a tinyurl link to the TrialX page containing matching trials.

So not to let go off my information junkie attitude and eagerness to learn new  things. I also started my own twitter at  http://twitter.com/clinicalSearch I have also started following the twitters from Jae Chung of GoBalto he is very active in Linkedin where I found him firsty. And also twitter of Patient Recruitment Company MediciGlobal and ClinicalTrialApp twitter from iPhoneClinial Trials

I agree twiiter application are helpful in AERS reporting along with other tools . I love see how they can add value as standalone tools

the news on Star Tribune and submitt your thoughts read at the linkedin answers  for bloggin in Medical Industry do and donts

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

BIO-IT WORLD COVERAGE ON INTEGRATING CLINICAL AND GENOMICS DATA AND PLATFORMS FOR PERSONALIZED MEDICINE

The March-April 2009 issue of Bio-IT World features Dana-Farber Cancer Institute cover story on integrating clinical and genomics data including details on the organization’s work with Oracle and InforSense, as well as a byline article on platforms for personalized medicine by Neil de Crescenzo, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Health Sciences.

Integrating Clinical and Genomics Data

The cover story of Bio-IT World highlights the groundbreaking work of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s (DFCI) John Quackenbush, professor of biostatistics and computational biology, who at the vanguard of translational medicine is bridging genomics, bioinformatics, and IT in an effort to shed light on cancer biology. With assists from Oracle and InforSense, Dana-Farber’s John Quackenbush is finding ways to mine vast patient data collections to better understand human cancer. “Our successful collaboration with Oracle and InforSense has put us in a position to think about reaching beyond DFCI and gradually pulling in a lot of Harvard’s multi-institutional spores and their data collections,” Quackenbush says.

To read the complete Bio-IT World cover story article on integrating clinical and genomics data, click here.

Platforms for Personalized Medicine
This article by Neil de Crescenzo, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Health Sciences discusses personalized medicine and how integrating clinical information and R&D data can ensure success. Personalized medicine promises to improve understanding of the mechanisms of disease and permit more effective patient care. It also stands to transform the focus of the pharmaceutical industry as the cost of drug discovery exceeds $1 billion, and established blockbuster drugs lose patent protection. Although it holds great promise, realizing the benefits of personalized medicine presents significant challenges for life sciences companies, particularly surrounding the integration of research and clinical data – both within and between life sciences companies and healthcare organizations.
To read the complete Bio-IT World article on platforms for personalized medicine, click here.

Click It Forward is a clinical trials and awareness tool that allows users of MySpace and Facebook. It will allow a broader audience to know more about recruitment for clinical trials.
Read on

On March 23, 2009, Oracle announced it agreed to acquire Relsys, a leading provider of drug safety, risk management and analytics applications for the health sciences industry. Relsys’s best-in-class solutions support adverse event reporting, risk management and drug safety analysis for pharmaceutical, biotechnology, contract research organizations and medical device companies worldwide.

More details on Oracle website: http://www.oracle.com/relsys/index.html

SAS Drug Development—is now available in an online mode. SAS hosts the program, and users log on via the internet. SAS’s goal is to have customers up and running on the system in a month.

SAS® Solutions OnDemand: Drug Development is a hosted solution for aggregating, analyzing and reviewing clinical trials data in order to determine safety and efficacy outcomes. It includes a compliance-enabling platform for efficiently developing, executing and managing the collection, sharing, transformation, analysis and submission of clinical research data.

press release

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An article published by DatMonitor Group read the complete article  here

View the Recoreded webcast by IBM Global Lead for Healthcare and Life Sciences. Win with Software as a Service in Healthcare and Life Sciences

SaaS is a great technical model that can save money, increase efficiency, scale-up fast etc etc. But is it a viable business methodology?. Does it make money for the owner who offer this service. according CEOs of many traditional software companies like Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft SaaS doesn’t make money meaning big margins and huge profits. Even though all these companies do have their own SaaS applications and strategy in place.

Health care and Medical practice on the other hand is a different place. And that is what Ravi Sohal, CEO of remakinghealthcare.com thinks based on his own experience Healthcare Internet Business Models Don’t Scale that easily. And I think his argument is spot on
While I agree to his arguments there are many software suppliers that services only healthcare and medical markets for exmaple Pharmacy One source which claims to be Healthcare’s #1 Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider. And yes its true that most of all such successful companies fall into one catagory- software vendors allbeit slightly different to the traditional ones

I am working on the topic (software as a service) SaaS applications in Medical and Healthcare field, so the next few months my focus there.

So this week I like to post about 3GDoctor.com a service that allows you to video consult with General Medical Council registered Doctors using a 3G Video Mobile. When you register as a patient with 3G Doctor you can also use it to create, store and manage your Personal Health Record which can be referred to by your Doctor during video consultations. Yummy now that feels like the next google acqusition target.

Mediserve is another company that is now planning to came up with SaaS model of their applications.

And of course have to talk about Microsoft , even though I work for Oracle andicrosoft is competition.

Digipede is developing on microsofts .net plafrom to help anyone providing SaaS on the Microsoft platform. And they claim to have a bioinformatics company testing their application to develop bioinformatics application in SaaS model And it lok like that customer is The Friedrich Miescher Institute (FMI) as a part of the Novartis Research Foundation, details of the case study on Digipede website

And yes I ahve written about  GeneBio earlier their claims to have PhenyxOnline as the first commercial platform in the proteomics field offered in a SaaS model    

Also came across this intersting post by Paweł Szczęsny.  Thinking about RaaS: Research-as-a-Service

The world summit on Cloud Computing is on December 1-2/2008. Surprisingly Bioinformatics is mentioned only once . And only by cycle computing a company offering grid computing solutions. That apart there is no talk about lifescience space. Ofcourse cloud computing is buzz word for now, and will remain so for some time. It might event meet the same fate of bioinformatics industry has faced in initial years. But this time around there are amny Enterprise companies backing the concept, catiously though. From Amazon, Microsoft, Google, to Sun

But according to according to research firm IDC the current economic crisis in the US may save IT companies that invest in cloud computing, as it will contribute to significant growth in that sector over the next five years.

ofcourse there are concerns around data privacy and data security But  Companies like Millenium Pharma re investing in technology provided by companies like WorkDay (SaaS HR started by former Peoplesoft founder). Earlier this year google announded that Genentech would use Google Apps

While Cloud computing for scientist stil have wait, unless you are working in CERN or other research centre on high computing projects, after all they invented Grid Computing or atleast made the fiest steps

In the background of the mounting negative publicity agianst consumer gene testing companies. Navigenics is teaming up with Scripps reseacrh institute to study how such tests affect patient behavior.

This is a long time study, over 20 years. with help from Affymetrix to Scan, Navigenics to interpret and offer life style guidance and the Microsoft HealthVault will be the place where participants can enter information and share it as they see fit with physicians

share your thoughts linkedin Answer

Google has launched the new google browser in Beta version. The  Google Chrome (BETA) for Windows is claiming to be a  browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

I downloaded it and is making this post fom the new browser , its fast is my first comment, but it still uses the IE engine just like Fiefox for its security features

Have you heard of the new feature in Internet Explorer 8 called InPrivate Browsing or rather nicknamed as Pron Mode, Macintosh users already know about this features that deletes the track record of your action in the Browser. Chomr also has a similar feature called incognito mode.

Am not that impressed I just ask my firefox to delete the cache and history automoatically every time I close the browser.

For More Details take a look at the website 

Tiffany A. Greenwood, Ph.D., assistant adjunct professor in the Department of Psychiatry, will utilize DNA microarray technology, which facilitates the simultaneous study of multiple gene interactions, to construct a custom “gene chip” to identify candidate genes related to mental illness. This research builds on a previous NARSAD-funded study led by UCSD colleague David Braff, M.D., professor of psychiatry and director of the Schizophrenia Program at UCSD School of Medicine, who was awarded a NARSAD Distinguished Investigator award in 2007

Dont get your imagination run wild, you IBM machine not going to make Chocolates. Mars and IBM are to combine scientific and research resources with the US Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) in an attempt to sequence and analyse the entire cocoa genome.

IBM said in a statement that the combined effort could benefit more than 6.5 million farmers worldwide and help sustain the supply of chocolate

IBM has produced a video promotion of the Cocoa Genome project which is available on YouTube

Since its record setting release day a lot has been written about Firfox3. And many said it has better memmory usage. Firefox 3 engineer Pavlov says Fiefox 3 has better memmory utilization, and I have looked at every blog and website that talked about how Fiefox 3 is better is terms of memmory use.

So I am surprised to see that in my office PC( IBM, Machine with Pentium 4 and 1GB RAM, WinXP)  opening google home page using an ultra high speed Corporate internet connection in opera 9.5 and Firefox 3.  Firefox raking in more memmory compared to Opera. I’m a big fan of Firefox because it’s so easy to customize, and have been using it for many years. and use it even in the office despite most of our internal applications not working on it, ofcourse I use a lot customizations.

Some How the final release uses more memmory compared to Opera and freezes more often while opening more than 10 or pages. Ofcourse I was not using any extensions while testing Firefox 3 vs Opera9.5

And acording to CNET also opera takes less memmory compared to Firefox 3