The tranSMART Foundation And BT Collaborate To Deliver Fast, Flexible Cloud-Based Applications To Life Science Organizations

BT joins the tranSMART Foundation to extend support to the developer community; companies to continue work on the next release of Translational Medicine Platform.

Wakefield, Massachusetts and Irving, Texas (PRWEB) April 30, 2014-The tranSMART Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides a global, open-source knowledge management platform for scientists to more easily share pre-competitive translational research data, and BT today announced that BT will join the tranSMART Foundation. This is an extension of their joint initiative announced last year to unlock the vast potential of cloud computing for the life sciences industry.

With the extension of this partnership, the Foundation’s Translational Medicine Platform will continue to be offered on the BT for Life Sciences cloud service to scientists in research hospitals, academic research institutions and life science research organizations globally, as well as third-party organizations. As an affiliate member of the tranSMART Foundation, BT will be able to offer scientists and researchers access to a fast and flexible cloud-based platform that enables them share high-quality research data with colleagues around the world.

“BT’s continuing support for the Foundation’s objectives, is evident in its ongoing willingness to provide resources to the development community,” said tranSMART Foundation CEO Keith Elliston. “BT brings state-of-the-art, cloud-based hosting technology to the life sciences community on a worldwide basis – enabling scientists to benefit from shared research for drug discovery and development. BT has also recently helped to facilitate ‘Hackathons’, in February and April, to support coding teams from several organizations in working together to extend the platform and prepare for the upcoming 1.2 release.”

The tranSMART Foundation is expected to release the next version 1.2 of its open source data sharing and analysis platform this summer. This release will further increase productivity and efficiency of research and development initiatives, bringing together core branches from several groups into a single code stream. As part of the release, BT will continue to provide key cloud resources when the new version is available for demo, testing and downloading.

“Our life sciences customers need reliable access to ecosystems that can quickly process massive amounts of data and adapt to the natural ebbs and flows of drug discovery and development. Our relationship with the tranSMART Foundation is an important milestone for our life science ecosystem,” said Yury Rozenman, Business Development Director, BT for Life Sciences. “Working with tranSMART enables our customers to better manage computing needs without worrying about expensive hardware and software purchases that can negatively impact the bottom line.”

BT for Life Sciences was developed as a secure platform, using BT Cloud Compute, which allows scientists to construct and orchestrate in-silico workflows and data pipelines so that new pharmaceutical targets and drug candidates can be identified. This platform enables research scientists to create global project groups and collaborate using social media tools. It also allows them to securely upload documents, share results and communicate via instant messaging, voice, video or chat.

Researchers can also analyze results in an environment that segments data and uses qualified hardware components and workflows specific to the pharmaceutical industry, helping them adhere to GxP quality and regulatory compliance requirements.

About BT
BT is one of the world’s leading providers of communications services and solutions, serving customers in more than 170 countries. Its principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to its customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband, TV and internet products and services; and converged fixed/mobile products and services. BT consists principally of five lines of business: BT Global Services, BT Business, BT Consumer, BT Wholesale and Openreach.

For the year ended 31 March 2013, BT Group’s reported revenue was £18,103m with reported profit before taxation of £2,315m.

British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York.

For more information, visit http://www.btplc.com.

About The tranSMART Foundation
The tranSMART Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides an open-source, cloud-based, data-sharing and analysis platform that enables scientists at universities, disease foundations, pharmaceutical companies, and government agencies around the world to share pre-competitive data in a way that saves money and time in translating research findings into new therapies and diagnostic tools. Founded to steward the tranSMART platform, the Foundation is headquartered in Wakefield, Massachusetts with Centers of Excellence in Ann Arbor, Mich.; London, England; Boston, Mass.; and Amsterdam, Netherlands. The tranSMART Foundation can also be found on the web at http://www.tranSMARTFoundation.org.