BioIT Solutions: A Cure for Biotech’s Data Management Headache

Over the past several years, advancements in genomics, proteomics, and related research technologies have multiplied the amount and variety of data scientists work with every day. The increased complexity of managing biological data is a key challenge in the biotech industry. BioIT Solutions surmounts the challenges by focusing its energy and expertise on biotechnology specialties, including genomic research, drug discovery, drug development, diagnostics, clinical operations, and intellectual property management. “Our solutions enable Life Sciences partners to focus on core activities by removing information management obstacles,” says Michael Fannon, President of BioIT Solutions.

Learned from his years of experience as CIO and Director of Gene Discovery for Human Genome Sciences, Fannon defines BioIT’s three key strategies: “First is our team’s proven expertise in biotechnology and our ability to bridge scientific work and business needs with a common solution. Second is a deployment methodology that complements the scientific process. And, finally, we bundle this accumulated knowledge in a software platform that accurately models biological data and automates routine IT functions.”

We are seeing the application of genome re¬search in the rapidly growing field of per¬sonalized medicine. “Think about the implications of sequencing an individual’s genome with high precision. To use a genome se¬quence for diagnostic purposes we need to compare it with well-characterized genomes. As this sort of test becomes common, we quickly see the challenge: huge quantities of information must be managed and interpreted. Further, the interpre¬tation will evolve as a deeper understanding of the ge¬nome’s influence on disease progression is understood,” says Fannon.

In contrast to using different applications for every function, BioIT developed an innovative informatics platform, 1Platform4, to integrate multiple scientific and business processes into a logical,