IDBS investment bears dividends in Olympics

1 Feb

I first ran the London Marathon in 2006 and was lucky enough to run it again last year, both times with incredibly generous support for my charities from everyone at IDBS. Thanks guys, you’ve helped keep me on course and become the runner that I am today!

Steve Mayhew marathon

To be honest, I thought that marathons would be the highlight of my running career. After all, there aren’t that many bigger challenges. But then someone told me about the National Lottery Olympic Park Run – with only a few days left before the ballot to select the lucky runners. So I applied.

Guess what? I got picked. Yes, I’m going to be one of 5,000 competitors cruising past the Olympic Park’s Aquatic Centre and Velodrome, before finally setting foot on the actual running track in the Olympic Stadium. Wow!

Going for Gold!

According to the blurb any one of us could be the first person to ever cross that hallowed Olympic finish line in an official race … cue three minutes of wonderful daydreams as the world’s press fights for my photograph, adoring crowds around the globe celebrate my God-like athleticism and I find myself headline news from Aldershot to Zhezkazgan.

Steve Mayhew marathon

Then reality hits. On a good day, on a flat course, with the wind behind me and a Red Sea-style parting of any slower runners in front, I reckon I can get close to a credible 35 minutes over the five mile course. However, I have a feeling that there will be more competitiveness in this race than there is in the pursuit of identifying putative biomarkers for disease identification or discovering the genetic drivers for just about any of the world’s illness you care to name.

But, at the risk of sounding like Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko, I think a little competition is something that brings out the best in all of us.

After all, I’m an IDBS man and a runner… so I’m well used to that!

So wish me luck for 2pm on the last Saturday in March. I’ll keep you posted.

Pride in the IDBS badge

26 Jan

Friday January 20, 2012 was a proud day for the Healthcare team at IDBS as our new US Healthcare Center of Excellence was opened by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick in front of a crowd of local dignitaries, press and analysts, customers and, of course, our employees.

Gov Deval Patrick

New gene sequencing technologies have – in the space of only 12 years – reduced the cost of sequencing a human genome from $3bn to $1000. To apply this data to clinical decision support requires new approaches to data management and understanding of genetics in the clinic. Our translational medicine solutions provide an enabling capability.

We see tremendous opportunity for Massachusetts and the rest of North America, as a result of the Meaningful Use Program, to advance scientifically and clinically from the growing availability of electronic medical records, but clinical and genetic data needs to be pulled together and made consumable by those who can take action for the benefit of patients.

Forward-looking organizations we speak with are looking for ways to use data from the clinic to accelerate research and then to apply the genetic and genomic understanding back into the clinic. With our ground breaking new systems, such as the ORIS project at King’s Health Partners, we are delivering this critical piece of the personalized medicine puzzle.

Click to see the video

We believe it is critical to unite diagnostics, pharmaceutical, academic centers and now hospital environments to create a collaborative genomically-centered ecosystem that is focused on improving patient care and research. Our new Center of Excellence is the hub around which we are building these systems in the US.

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Welcome to 2012: The year of personalized medicine?

11 Jan

Personalized medicine2012 may not be the year that genetics is routinely used in making clinical decisions in every hospital but it promises to be a pivotal year for personalized medicine. The rapidly dropping cost of genome sequencing, now around $4000 per person and the growing availability of electronic patient data is providing a huge opportunity to improve patient outcomes and reduce the incidence of adverse drug events. In Minnesota, US, the Mayo Clinic has begun a study to systematically sequence every patient, with a parallel study testing genetic variants associated with drug metabolism. Both studies will be used to drive the routine use of genetic data in clinical decision-making and will enable a better understanding of the impact on cost and effectiveness of care.

Major initiatives in the UK, such as the Cancer Research UK Stratified Medicine Initiative, are routinely collecting patient and genetic data and the Technology Strategy Board is funding development of low cost genetic screens to be used by the NHS, as well as funding work like IDBS’ Acropolis project that will enable cloud-based collaborative research projects to be run on genetic and patient data.

We await the outcome of these projects with much excitement and, based on the growing number of requests to support clinical use of genetic data in addition to our translational research capabilities, we expect to be very busy in the next 12 months.

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“Why isn’t that documented?”

21 Dec

How we use Web 2.0 methodology so you’ll never say this about IDBS

In his last blog post, Chris Molloy highlighted reasons why accurate content is important. So when it comes to product documentation, getting accurate content is all there is to it. Right? Wrong! There is little point in having accurate documentation if no one can find it, can’t understand it when they find it or have to wade through unnecessary detail. Even worse is being left with insufficient detail and no means of getting it. Grrrrrr!

By asking customers a few simple questions – knowing their existing knowledge level, the level of detail needed, where they’ve come from or are going to next – we can identify the best strategy for giving them what they want and guiding them through the large amount of information we have for them. The easier it is for them to find relevant information, the sooner they return to do what they do best with an increased level of effectiveness.

Delivering content in a Web 2.0 world

It’s all plain sailing then? Well it could be if it wasn’t for technology. These days the boundaries between different content formats are not so much blurred, but virtually transparent. Hardcopy can be embedded inside web based content and links to web based content can be displayed in printed documents. Add in the arrival of smartphones, iPads, Kindles and other tablets and you have a myriad of platforms all with their unique browser or rendering characteristics. Next throw in changes to the way people access and use the available information – just think how often we assume things have touch screens when most things do not – and you have a serious mix of variables to cope with. Finally consider social media, which has many questioning whether their tried and trusted documentation delivery mechanism still cuts the mustard.

Having your cake AND eating it

We’ve implemented an approach that uses a consistent style, look and feel throughout, yet provides targeted access to only the information an end user requires. Additional information is easily available and links are provided to lead them to the next workflow step. In short, there is detail if they need it but no-one has to wade through that detail to get to simple help and guidance. The E-WorkBook Suite help includes videos, printable quick start guides and embedded sample files. Customers can even download and import them into their system to try things out and get learning.

Improving content through feedback

We believe that you ignore the future at your peril. Customer demographics, usage patterns and new technology all conspire to make documentation seem like a lumbering dinosaur in no time. Our ability to keep things up to date and relevant is significantly enhanced by regular and rapid feedback. To ensure we get this, we use an analytics application designed specifically for Technical Writers. It allows us to interrogate how users consume our documentation. Armed with this we can identify any pain our customers experience and implement solutions – fast. The beauty of this is that a solution may only require a redesign of the user interface or workflow and no documentation changes.

Not changing a document? Now that’s something I bet you never thought you’d hear a Technical Writer saying!

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Why Chemists should always share their failures

14 Dec

Scientific research is changing. Our customers want to break down the silos between departments, improve communication, simplify the way they work and let scientists focus on doing science. Their biggest frustration, – especially in chemical research - is that they know they are repeating work that has been done countless times before. But there’s no way to know in advance that a particular chemical synthesis is doomed to failure. Unless you’re lucky enough to have a colleague who has tried it before, you have no way of finding out.

So you go ahead and run the synthesis. Then, for some unknown reason, it fails. You shrug and  – and this is the important part – you don’t tell anyone about it. And that, in my view, is a huge mistake.

Failure is good

Of course, you record the fact that the experiment was performed, exactly as you should, in your paper or electronic journal. Maybe someday one of your colleagues, trying to do the same thing will see your previous attempts, and learn from them. But scientists are cautious about publishing failure. Where is the benefit? Journals aren’t interested in science that doesn’t work. Funding bodies are unlikely to reward someone with a track record of failure. So this huge corpus of potential knowledge is lost. Some sources say only 5% of scientific work ever gets published, the rest of it (the less successful or more humdrum work) sits in paper or electronic repositories, never to see the light of day again.

However, people are beginning to recognise that hiding less than perfect results is a problem, so we, along with many others, are trying to address it.

Instant messaging – for chemists

RSC Advancing the Chemical SciencesThe advent of free online chemistry resources like the RSC ChemSpider.com, now makes it easy for researchers to find information on compounds. Recent work done by the RSC, in collaboration with the Unilever Centre for Molecular Informatics at Cambridge University, allows researchers using our ELN, E-WorkBook, to look up chemical structures on Chemspider. Here you can see physicochemical properties, assay results and commercial availability for example, all from within your Notebook, by simply pressing a button. And you can share your knowledge more freely, by publishing your compounds to Chemspider. It only takes one click.

Work is well advanced on a way to publish synthetic reaction schemes too, so even those failed reactions that are no good to anyone (except, of course, they are) can go in there too.

I think this is a great thing. It lets chemists learn from each other’s mistakes. It makes more scientific research public knowledge. It breaks down barriers. And it lets chemists communicate their findings with each other openly – hopefully to the betterment of all researchers everywhere. Even better it’s now available free for our ELN users. Take a look at it in action here.

If you want to share your research data with the scientific community – whether it’s a breakthrough or a letdown – or you just want to find out fast information on compounds, download the plugin from our IDBS Labs support portal today.

The more you open up, the more you’ll be amazed at what you can learn.

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