Joseph A. Cerro

R&D IT Best Practices for Growing Small/Mid-Sized Biopharmas

I'll be moderating a roundtable discussion next month on the topic of R&D I.T. Best Practices for Growing Small/Mid-Sized Biopharmas. The event is being coordinated by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, and it will be held at Microsoft's New England Research & Development Center from 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM on Wednesday, April 14, 2010.

If you are interested in being a panelist, or if there is someone whom you'd like to see as a panelist, please send me a note via email or via twitter direct message.

You can register to attend the event at http://bit.ly/9gUR4p.

Panelists include:

• David Osterman, Director of Research Informatics, Biorelix, Inc.
• Tom Plasterer, Adjunct Professor, Northeastern University
• Keith Robison, Lead Senior Scientist, Infinity Pharmaceuticals
• Jeff Warhaft, Associate Director, R&D IT Solutions Delivery, Biogen Idec
• Barry Wythoff, Scientist & IT Project Manager, Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
• David Yee, Head of Knowledge & Information Systems, Archemix Corporation

Here is the preliminary abstract:

R&D IT Best Practices for Growing Small/Mid-Sized Biopharmas

As smaller biopharma companies grow and mature into larger organizations, they need to transition from relatively ad hoc, spreadsheet heavy, lightly supported R&D IT environments to more comprehensive, scalable platforms and support models. This presents substantial challenges to scientists, managers, and IT professionals, ranging from prioritization of new features and functions, creation of new workflows, budget and staffing issues, in-house platforms versus COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) platforms, and getting organizational support for necessary changes. Our expert panel will discuss these issues and more in this Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council Life Science Cluster roundtable discussion.

Yale Science & Engineering Awards Dinner Tonight

Between helping to organize HealthCampBoston+SocialPharmer and then attending Health 2.0 Meets Ix, it's been a busy few days for me. I plan on writing some thoughts about both in the next few days. Before I get to that, however, I'm at Yale University today to attend a board meeting of the Yale Science & Engineering Association and to attend its annual awards dinner.

I'm very excited to have the opportunity to present the YSEA Award for Meritorious Service to Yale to Professor Paul Fleury, Yale's Frederick William Beinecke Professor of Engineering and Applied Physics & Physics. Dr. Fleury has had a profound impact on science & engineering at Yale, and I look forward to posting the details of his award soon.

Tonight, I'll also have the privilege of recognizing some of Yale's finest undergraduate students by presenting them with the YSEA High Scholarship Awards. The recipients, all of whom are carrying 4.0 grade point averages, include:

Class of 2009
Adam Michael Bouland, Computer Science & Mathematics
Monica Jing Wood, Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry

Class of 2010
Elizabeth Rose Jerison, Physics
Mihan Robin Lee, Biology/Women’s Gender & Sexuality Studies       
Michael Fitzgerald Mester, Computer Science
Susan Elizabeth Scanlon, Physics/Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry

A Molecular Modeling Reference

While speaking on a panel at last week's Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference, I mentioned a study from a few years ago that examined the predictive power of a few docking programs. The full reference is Warren GL, et al. "A critical assessment of docking programs and scoring functions." J Med Chem. 2006 Oct 5;49(20):5912-31.

For a very well done discussion of the paper and its conclusions, please see the blog entry, "Molecular Modeling Cage Match," written by my colleague, Derek Lowe, at The Pipeline.

(Note: For those of you interested in a copy of my presentation from the conference, you can download it at http://www.josephcerro.com/docs/20090209_MolMedTriConf.zip (1.8 MB zipped PDF file).

Northeastern's Masters of Science in Health Informatics

I just received some information (see below) from Stanley Hochberg, MD, regarding the Masters of Science in Health Informatics Program at Boston's Northeastern University. I've had a few interactions with Dr. Hochberg, and he looks like he is making excellent progress with this new program.

[The program] has now grown to over 70 students and we are now open for applications for Fall 09.  I wanted to ask your assistance in getting this announcement out to potential students by forwarding the information below to anyone appropriate in your organization or network of contacts.

The Masters Program in Health Informatics at Northeastern is now accepting applications for the Fall of 2009.  Since its inception two years ago, the program has grown to over 70 students, the majority of whom work full time and enroll in the program part time.  The program has 18 adjunct  faculty who come from senior positions in health care delivery and private industry.  Several of the faculty are well known nationally for their professional accomplishments and involvement in setting policy in the area of health care IT.  Each class meets once a week at night from 6 to 8:30 pm on Northeastern's Boston campus and most part time students take 2 or 3 classes a semester.  Students come with backgrounds in health care or technology, and include nurses, pharmacists, physicians, programmers, project managers, and analysts amongst others.

Additional information about the program and application process is on the web at  www.healthinformatics.neu.edu

What is it about Twitter?

Mark Scrimshire put together a superb presentation about Twitter last week. Although I've embedded the SlideShare deck below, please do check out Mark's blog - lots of interesting thoughts and observations!

What Is It About Twitter?

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: citih twitter)

A Call to Arms - Data Standards in Collaborative Research

I'll be moderating a presentation and panel discussion next month in Waltham, MA as part of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council's Life Sciences lecture series on "Technology And Life Sciences Collaboration."

Dr. Martin Leach, Head of Research and Biomarker IT at Merck Research Laboratories will present A Call to Arms - Data Standards in Collaborative Research. I've known Martin since my days at Bayer, when he was my counterpart at Curagen. He is an articulate and outspoken advocate for the collaborative benefits that are possible when data standards can be adopted and applied across industry and the academy. I anticipate that he will make a stirring call for biopharma groups working in areas like preclinical research and translational medicine to adopt some of the data standardization approaches that have been so successful on the clinic, such as CDISC, etc.

Immediately following Martin's presentation, we'll convene a panel to discuss what can and is being done toward the development and adoption of research data standards and asking 'if not, why not.' The panelists will include Dr. Chris Bouton, CEO of Entagen, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Bioinformatics at Boston University and former Head of Integrative Biology at Pfizer, Dr. Jens Hoefkens, Managing Director of GeneData USA, Michele Pontinen, MBA, Life Sciences R&D Practice Leader at CapGemini, and Matthew Trunnell, Manager of Research Computing at the Broad Institute.

For up to date information about the presentation and panel discussion, or to register to attend, please visit http://lifesciences081202.eventbrite.com/.

Health 2.0 Conference (Oct '08) Twitter Stream

When I attended the Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco last month, I learned that some of the participants planned to microblog the conference using twitter. Twitter is a tool that allows users to post short messages (140 characters or fewer) to the web and to share them easily with others. When multiple twitter users "follow" each other online, the effect is something like joining a near real time conversation.

Somewhere along the way, twitter users began adding a "#" symbol (pound sign or hash character) before key words in their messages, tagging the words as being somehow important or adding context. The neat thing about such "hashtags" is that twitter's search tool lets you find messages containing specific hashtags, even if you aren't "following" the person who originally posted the message.

This is where it gets interesting: if people agree on a hashtag for an event (like a conference), then it becomes easy to follow what is happening at that conference, even if you are not actually attending it. Further, collecting messages with a specific hashtag creates a record of an event, not so different from collecting a series of dispatches by a group of correspondents. Finally, if you are at a conference, following a hashtag thread can let you know about last minute changes, insider info, spontaneous get-togethers, or simply where to find the best beer within walking distance of the convention center.

At the Health 2.0 Conference, people settled on the #health2con and #health20con hashtags. Using these tags truly added to the conference experience, allowing people to connect and to converse with a wide range of participants whom they might not have met otherwise, and, best of all, providing a means to keep the conversation going beyond the conference.

The consolidated #health2con/#health20con search results are available at http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23health20con+OR+%23health2con&rpp=100

Unfortunately, twitter's search engine only returns the last six months of results, so that link may not show the results from this past October's conference by next April or May. On the bright side, by then I'm sure that it will show the results from the next Health 2.0 Conference, to be held on April 22-23, 2009 in Boston!

Now, we just need to get the ball rolling for a hashtag for next month's Consumer Health World conference...

A Community-Driven Health Informatics Calendar

Mark Hawker has been on fire recently! His latest effort is a community-driven Health Informatics Calendar that anyone using an iCal-compatible calendar tool (Google Calendar, Apple iCal, etc.) can subscribe to. While there are other good calendars out there, most of them are company or organization focused, like the HIMSS calendar.

(Note: the calendar uses the London timezone by default, so adjust your perspective accordingly if you are based elsewhere.)

Update: Jen McCabe Gorman points out another good calendar, hosted at the Kaiser Network.

The Forgotten Health Tweeple

Mark Hawker got so much feedback about his earlier "Top 30 Health Tweeple" list that he has added twenty "Forgotten Health Tweeple" to the list.

Thanks again, Mark, for putting compiling the list.

Top 30 Health Tweeple

Mark Hawker has created a list of the "Top 30 Health Tweeple," (aka people who use twitter and tweet about health topics), and he put me on the list!

That means I'm going to have to boost my game!

Many thanks, Mark!