Most Americans -- myself included -- think we live in the greatest country on earth. After all, we have the biggest economy, the most powerful military, the most pervasive popular culture, and, of course, the American Dream. We've got Wall Street and Silicon Valley, Walmart and Amazon, Hollywood and Nashville. We have -- well, we used to have -- the biggest city, the tallest building, and the largest manufacturing output. But when it comes to some of the basics, we're not doing so well. Take health care, for example. If you listen to politicians, we have the best health care in the world. And, indeed, if you have enough money (or really good insurance), happen to live in the right zip code, and manage to stumble upon the right doctors/hospitals, that's true. You can get the best health care in the world here. But fail any one of those qualifiers, maybe not...
Research and Development (R&D)
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3 MHealth Trends Playing On World Stage
Developments in healthcare are usually seen as a first-world matter. Talk about mobile health, or mHealth, and an image of R&D trials in some suburban hospital almost immediately come to mind. But some of the most groundbreaking advances in mHealth are taking place far away from American medical facilities... Read More »
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America's Dismal International Rankings - Time to Innovate Our Way Out of Our Messes
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Australian Chief Scientist: Act Now, or Expect Deadly 'Post-Antibiotics Era'
In the latest warning that antibiotics resistance is nearing dangerous levels in modern populations, Australia's chief scientist has issued a stark warning that if we don't invest in combatting it now, sore throats and other minor infections could one day be deadly. Read More »
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Building BRCK: The Story Behind Ushahidi’s Mobile Internet Router
Why do we rely on equipment made for Berlin, Orlando and Tokyo when the conditions we have in Nairobi, Lagos or New Delhi are completely different? Read More »
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Can Open Science Help Patients And Save Pharma?
Open science research and development hybrid development model can protect pharma company profits while reducing costs of medicines for consumers Read More »
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Companies And Open Science
There is an argument that says we should not be making simple compounds in academic research labs, but rather using specialist services to make molecules with which we then do interesting science. Read More »
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Culture as a Culprit of the Pharma R&D Crisis
Fundamentally, I think the bulk of the last decade's productivity decline is attributable to a culture problem. The Big Pharma culture has been homogenized, purified, sterilized, whipped, stirred, filtered, etc and lost its ability to ferment the good stuff required to innovate. This isn't covered in most reviews of the productivity challenge facing our industry, because its nearly impossible to quantify, but it's well known and a huge issue.
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Kitware Co-Founder And Chairman Ken Martin Named CFO Of The Year
Kitware, an advanced R&D software solutions provider, today announces the recognition of Dr. Ken Martin, Chairman and CFO of Kitware, as CFO of the Year by the Albany Business Review. Dr. Martin was selected as a finalist last month from among over 100 nominations in the small business category, and was named the category winner at an awards ceremony in Troy, New York. Read More »
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Leveraging Appification To Spur R&D Innovation
In my last entry, I posited that technology should be a barrier to “appifying” R&D workflows. So why haven’t apps taken off so far in R&D? I’d argue that it comes down to the paradigm shift that mobile technology has created in computing. Read More »
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Mendeley User Analysis Shows Open Access Is Critical For Low-Income Countries
The Mendeley collaboration company has published the Global Research Report (http://mnd.ly/global-research-report), an analysis of two million scholars' research activity in relation to economic indicators and research productivity. Read More »
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NexJ Systems Inc. Ranks In Top 5 Of The Deloitte Technology Fast 50™ Program For Third Consecutive Year
NexJ Systems Inc., a provider of cloud-based software, delivering enterprise solutions for the financial services, insurance, and healthcare industries, today announced it ranked as the fifth fastest growing technology company in Canada in the 15th annual Deloitte Technology Fast 50™ awards program. Read More »
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Open Source Competitions And Prizes #1
I recently read Future Perfect by Steven Johnson. The book articulates what is meant by a person being a “Peer Progressive” – someone with a set of values based on the power of distributed networks to solve problems (a “Baran Web”) as opposed to a more regulated, centralized mechanism (a “Legrand Star”). Read More »
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Opinion: 'Teach Young People To Be Innovative'
The world has an insatiable appetite for innovation. To feed this desire for technologic and scientific breakthroughs, nations invest in our celebrated universities. Tax and tuition dollars go to educate students -- the next generation of open-minded thinkers -- but also toward fostering research. After all, academia is the quintessential innovation incubator. Isn't it? Read More »
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Recent Research Highlights Potential Of Open Access In Drug Discovery
The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) announced the identification of three potential drug classes for the treatment of neglected tropical diseases through the availability of hundreds of compounds in the public domain. Read More »
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Shutterstock's Chris Fischer: Making The Most Of Open Source's 'Huge Tech Edge'
"Some of the most mature databases have been open-source-based. Also, the most mature Web servers in the market are open source software. Considering the level of maturity and the capabilities of the technology, I would take open source over any proprietary software. Read More »
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