Microsoft Announces Winners of the 2009 Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences Innovation Awards

SAN DIEGO, June 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Microsoft Corp. today announced winners of the 2009 Microsoft Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences Innovation Awards, honoring companies that have made the most innovative use of Microsoft-based solutions for breakthroughs in business processes and practices throughout the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry.

Announced at the Drug Information Association’s (DIA) 45th annual meeting in San Diego, the awards were presented in the categories of discovery and product innovation, sales and marketing, and clinical development.

“The companies recognized are examples of innovators who have developed technology solutions to address the major issues impacting the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry today,” said Michael Naimoli, director of U.S. life sciences industry solutions at Microsoft. “By building upon the existing Microsoft software platform, this year’s winners demonstrated solutions that help streamline clinical trial and discovery processes to facilitate research and discovery, as well as improve the end user’s experience.”

Award Winners

Submissions for this year’s awards came from global life sciences corporations specializing in biotechnology, diagnostics, medical equipment and devices, pharmaceuticals, animal health, nutritional products, and consumer health products. The winners are the following:

—  Discovery and Product Innovation: HUNT Research Centre and Biobank

            Norway-based HUNT Research Centre and Biobank hosts one of the
            largest population-based health studies ever performed, consisting
            of three separate studies that span nearly 25 years and evaluate
            the same patient population. The studies, initiated to support
            epidemiological, clinical and preventive medical research, offer
            valuable insight into disease status and progression, particularly
            in relation to quality-of-life measures such as one’s environment,
            education and occupation. In preparation for the third study, HUNT
            Research Centre and Biobank recognized the need to deploy a
            technology to better manage and analyze real-time data.

            HUNT Research Centre and Biobank implemented Thermo Scientific
            Nautilus Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) to
            facilitate their ability to gather, store, manage, track and
            retrieve data securely, and yield real-time, dependable analysis
            and reports. Built on the Microsoft.NET Framework, Thermo
            Scientific Nautilus LIMS(TM) with the use of Visual Studio has
            enabled HUNT Research Centre and Biobank to improve its efficiency
            and data reliability to better serve the research community.

        —  Sales and Marketing: Bristol-Myers Squibb

            Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. is a leading global biopharmaceutical
            company that develops innovative medicines to combat serious
            diseases, with the end goal of extending and improving human life.
            In order to address the increasing complexity of business and
            customer changes, Bristol-Myers Squibb UK realized that its old
            technology would no longer suffice.

            Bristol-Myers Squibb UK deployed Data Intelligence’s Business
            Intelligence Solution, PharmaANALYTICS(TM), to manage all of the
            sales and marketing data sources for the entire U.K. organization.
            As a result, the Data Intelligence SQL Server-based solution has
            enabled the staff to quickly respond to new business challenges
            and opportunities. In addition, over 200 sales representatives now
            have immediate access to their sales performance by account.

        —  Clinical Development: Harvard Clinical Research Institute

            The Harvard Clinical Research Institute advances research by
            facilitating more efficient collaboration between the industry and
            academia. A highly respected academic research organization (ARO)
            the Harvard Clinical Research Institute needed to aggregate data
            from multiple sources into one to generate increased efficiency
            and productivity. The Harvard Clinical Research Institute will
            make more information available to study constituents and respond
            more capably to a growing number of research centers around the
            world.

            The Harvard Clinical Research Institute deployed TranSenda’s
            Office-Smart Clinical Trial Manager (OSCTM) in order to access
            critical operational data from disparate systems and multiple
            clinical trials, and manage it into a single source. The
            deployment of OSCTM, with its native interoperability with the
            Microsoft Office SharePoint System, resulted in a streamlined
            processing of operational data management, significantly reducing
            the amount of time and effort involved in each study. The Harvard
            Clinical Research Institute has also reduced overall costs for the
            overhead of data collection and retrieval.

The 2009 Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences Innovation Award winners were selected by an esteemed panel of industry experts:

  • Scott Lundstrom, research vice president, Health Industry Insights, an IDC Company
  • James Averback, president, Life Science Integration Partners
  • Benjamin Rooks, principal, ST Advisors LLC
  • Salvatore Salamone, senior contributing editor, Bio-IT World

More information about the 2009 Pharmaceutical and Life Science Innovation Awards can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/industry/healthcare/lifesciences/innovationawards.mspx.

About Microsoft in Health

Microsoft is committed to improving health around the world through software innovation. Over the past 12 years, Microsoft has steadily increased its investments in health, with a focus on addressing the challenges of health providers, health and social services organizations, payers, consumers, and life sciences companies worldwide. Microsoft closely collaborates with a broad ecosystem of partners and develops its own powerful health solutions, such as Amalga and HealthVault. Together, Microsoft and its industry partners are working to advance a vision of unifying health information and making it more readily available, ensuring the best quality of life and affordable care for everyone.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Website: http://www.microsoft.com