About Us | Press Releases | 2006 | April 7

THE SECOND ANNUAL BIO IT COALITION "BEST PRACTICES IN BIO IT AWARDS" WILL BE PRESENTED AT GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY ON MAY 4, 2006

The BIO IT Coalition Best Practices Awards recognize individuals or companies for information technology/life science contributions that result in product innovation, growth, leadership, and increased funding for Bio IT industry undertakings.  The purpose of the awards is to help cutting edge technologies gain recognition and awareness and to build funding alliances for Bio and IT.  Nominations, solicited from industry leaders, will be accepted through April 19, 2006.  The BIO IT Coalition will announce finalists by April 26.  All winners will be notified and invited to attend the awards dinner and ceremony. 

Awards will be given to industry nominees in five categories.  The Business Catalyst award goes to a financial partner recognized for supporting individuals or companies whose innovative ideas resulted in advances in Bio IT, business, and society.  The Company award will be given to the company whose imagination, innovation and intelligent risk-taking in the application of IT in the life sciences has led to the most dramatic progress in the advancement of BIO IT either through its own development or its influence on the industry.  The best application of IT to a life science product or service will receive the Innovation award.  The Visionary award will be granted to an individual whose knowledge, leadership and energy have helped the Bio IT industry gain recognition and advancement.  New this year is the Entrepreneur award for the individual(s) whose vision, leadership, and business skills have combined the life science and IT disciplines to create or grow a highly successful Bio IT enterprise.  Proven excellence and achievement in formation of business infrastructure, raising capital and/or revenue, product creation and development, and/or creation and maintenance of strategic alliances will be considered.

Last years awardees were (i) Business Catalyst, Dr. Wei-Wu He, a talented, creative financial partner recognized for providing funding for individuals and companies whose innovative ideas have resulted in advances in Bio/IT, business, and society, (ii) the Company, Celera Genomics Group cited for using its imagination, innovation and intelligent risk-taking in the application of IT to the life sciences, (iii) the Innovation - Sentel Corporation's RDR System, because it saves lives by detecting dangerous chemical and biological agents in sensitive military and other facilities, and (iv) the Visionary, Dr. Francis Collins, recognized for his leadership in shepherding the highly successful public effort to sequence the human genome.  For more information, go to events.Annual_Awards.2005.html.

This year's annual conference "Using Advanced Information Technologies to Develop Personalized Medicine" will be held on May 4 & 5, on the campus of George Mason University.  "Advances for accelerating the prevention, detection, and cure of disease will come about from the convergence of IT, science and business," said Steve Mandell, Chairman of the Coalition.  "A deeper understanding of mechanisms and pathways of disease, new creative business methods, and improved clinical informatics will help develop effective personalized medicine that reflects an individual's unique genetic makeup.  Finding cures that avoid the harmful and sometimes lethal side effects of "one size fits all" blockbusters will require a cataclysmic shift in thinking.  A change from the blockbuster mentality to a personalized medicine model will be better for everyone.  This conference will explore the many ways in which this changed thinking is already happening," he added.  For more information about the conference, go to events.annual.html.

The major sponsors of the event are American Medical Records Network, Inc., Arlington Economic Development, George Mason University College of Arts & Sciences, George Mason University Volgenau School of Information Technology & Engineering, and Pepper Hamilton LLP.