Stories by Mark D. Uehling

Shootout at the data corral

FRAMINGHAM (03/22/2004) - Selecting an electronic data capture (EDC) vendor makes buying a pig in a poke seem worry-free. One can see if the pig has four legs. With clinical trial software, defects may not be revealed for years. Peering into the clinical poke, Forrester Research Inc. last month published an analysis ranking eight major EDC vendors on 160 criteria.

A perfect 10?

FRAMINGHAM (02/26/2004) - Science today lives in a database. Touching discovery research and clinical practice, reaching academia and industry, Oracle Corp. provides the foundation for more major vendors' software and instruments than any other company. Its new database, Oracle 10g, has been stuffed with bioinformatic and statistical algorithms designed to serve scientists.

Merck: We're so late we're early

BOSTON (11/24/2003) - It's an open secret. In the 1990s, wags say, Merck & Co. Inc. sank US$100 million into developing software to collect and store clinical trial data. On the back end, the project's data management system is used to this day. But Merck's homegrown, pre-Internet electronic data capture (EDC) software to gather clinical data went nowhere. Now, Merck tells Bio·IT World that it is trying to put that fiasco behind it and hammer out which 21st-century technologies it will use to gather clinical data.

c:\ucw\ubi3.txt Ellison charts course for 10g

FRAMINGHAM (10/21/2003) - All Jake Chen wanted to do was find similar pairs of proteins in yeast and humans. As principal bioinformatics scientist at Prolexys Pharmaceuticals (formerly Myriad Proteomics), he does not mince words about one of his most indispensible tools. "Using BLAST in the traditional way can be a laborious process and a data management hell," Chen says, ticking off half a dozen steps of copying, pasting, and file creation as he switches between a variety of applications, databases, and Web sites.

FDA vision quest ends

FRAMINGHAM (09/24/2003) - Can one agency make 20 percent of the U.S. economy more efficient? Late last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it would try. It released its "strategic action plan." Nothing in the document is blazingly new, but it does telegraph key regulatory priorities for the near term. "We have undertaken a major strategic action plan within the agency," says FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan in his introduction to the document.

Clinical IT sumo wrestlers

FRAMINGHAM (09/24/2003) - DataTrak International Inc. is the poster child for electronic data capture (EDC) -- a paradox of programming excellence and impending doom. SEC filings say there is no immediate prospect of the Cleveland-based application service provider (ASP) making money. Shareholders are in a mutiny, with 31 percent of shares voted against management in one recent vote.

Fishing chips

FRAMINGHAM (09/24/2003) - Once upon a time, on a planet similar to ours, a promising anti-inflammatory drug was in trouble. Efficacy was fine. But the company developing the drug still worried: Could it have unwanted effects on the immune system? Animal studies could provide only indirect insight. Clinical trials could take forever.

Oracle Extends Empire, Flexes Life Science Biceps

FRAMINGHAM (09/16/2003) - This week's OracleWorld, the company's annual love poem to itself in San Francisco, featured a full day of sessions organized for the company's life science users. The sessions were designed to showcase the company's major update of its database, Oracle 10g, due by the end of the year. Bio-IT World will analyze the new database in future coverage.

ORACLEWORLD - Oracle flexes life science biceps

FRAMINGHAM (09/15/2003) - Last week's OracleWorld, the company's annual love poem to itself in San Francisco, featured a full day of sessions organized for the company's life science users. The sessions were designed to showcase the company's major update of its database, Oracle 10g, due by the end of the year. Bio-IT Worldwill analyze the new database in future coverage.

Oracle extends empire to life sciences

This week's OracleWorld, the company's annual love poem to itself in San Francisco, featured a full day of sessions organised for the company's life science users. The sessions were designed to showcase the company's major update of its database, Oracle Corp.’s 10g, due by the end of the year. Bio-IT World will analyse the new database in future coverage.

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