If you watch this space by RSS, make sure you catch the additions and corrections by BioIT World’s Kevin Davies and my fellow Codon Devices alum Jack Leonard on the Ion Torrent technology (as well as Daniel MacArthur’s piece on the last day of AGBT). All were on site & actually saw the machine [...]

Today was the last day of the Marco Island conference, so I won’t be hammering Twitter again for quite a while. The afternoon session focused on emerging technologies.
Complete Genomics appears to have dispelled the skepticism they had been met with last year. It certainly helped that two customers presented data (Anthony Fejes’ notes [...]

Although Massachusetts is a relatively small state, it has the sixth largest (by acreage) state park system in the country. One example is Moore State Park in Paxton. Here are two details from a winter walk.

Image via Wikipedia
It sounds funny. Unfortunately, this is serious business.  Read this US New and World Report news article, Kids and Killer Hot Dogs? 3 Tips to Prevent Choking on Food.
In a nutshell, here are three practical ways to reduce choking risk for children:

Re-engineer children’s food yourself to reduce choking hazards. 
Cook foods intended for [...]

A conversation with a reporter yesterday helped me clarify my thoughts about federal health care legislation. In my view, the most effective role of the federal government would be to provide national standards by which the health insurance companies operate (e.g., with regard to pre-existing conditions, rescission, and lifetime limits), require the existence of [...]

The Pacific Biosciences instrument is officially unveiled now, with those lucky/smart (or SMRT?) enough to go to Marco Island filling in all of us not in that position. Sounds like a great lot of hoopla, though they didn’t drag the Hornet for the splashdown.
First of all, it’s a beast. “In this corner, weighing [...]

Several weeks ago, I wrote about a new clinical partnership between Atrius Health and BIDMC. Today’s Boston Globe has a story by Liz Kowalcyzk that provides more context for this relationship.
The article mentions the integration of our electronic medical records. John Halamka describes this in more detail on his blog:
By working with Epic [...]

Checkout this free checklist made available by the Auditing Group, Inc., Audit Checklist for Drug Industry.
It’s another resource and perspective on approaching FDA GMP audit preparedness.
Additional Resources:
ISO 13485:2003 and FDA QSR (21 CFR 820) Internal Audit and Gap Analysis Checklist
Return Home: http://drughealth.blogspot.com/
GMP Posters
The Health, Drug, Prescription, and GMP Supersite Gift Store
Return to Mobile Home: [...]

Back to our occasional series on infrastructure. For this post, I will be digging back into the telecommunications portion of my career, to a period when tin cans and string dominated the industry.* Well, maybe not quite so far back, as that, but far enough that I came up empty when I did [...]

The Marco Island Advances in Genome Biology and Technology, or AGBT (or just Marco Island) conference started up today. Whatever weather they’re having is better than the cold rain that soaked my commute.
A sure sign a conference is hot is that there are lots of announcements prior to the conference that could be at [...]