4:00 pm Event Chairperson’s Opening Remarks
Cindy Crowninshield, Conference Director, Cambridge Healthtech Institute

4:15 Informatics: Integration & Convergence
John Reynders, Ph.D.,Vice President & Chief Information Officer,Johnson & Johnson, Pharma R&D

5:00 Welcome Reception in the Exhibit Hall
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7:30 am Registration and Morning Coffee

8:15 Event Chairperson’s Opening Remarks
Phillips Kuhl, Co-founder and President, Cambridge Healthtech Institute 

8:20 Drug Development: Evolving Challenges and Opportunities
Joshua Boger, Ph.D., President & Chief Executive Officer, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

9:00 Keynote Presentation & 2008 Benjamin Franklin Award
Robert Gentleman, Ph.D., Head of Program in Computational Biology, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

9:30 Coffee Break, Exhibit and Poster Viewing in the Exhibit Hall

10:50 Track Chairperson’s Remarks
James Reaney, Director, Research Markets, BlueArc Corporation

11:00 Internal-External Scientific Data Integration 
The sheer volume of public and internal data for scientific decision-making within Merck is growing exponentially, outpacing our ability to capture, integrate, and make it widely accessible. This is partly due to the rapid growth of biomedical literature, the proliferation of high-throughput methods in genomics and other fields, and dynamic state of biological knowledge and vocabulary. This presentation discusses a strategy used at Merck to capture and integrate gene-related information, and to distribute the data across the company using custom software tools that have helped increase the efficiency of basic research. We will also discuss the potential extensibility of this strategy to other domains, and scalability as part of a larger data and information management solution.
Jason Johnson, Ph.D., Senior Director, Molecular Informatics, Rosetta Inpharmatics/Merck & Co., Inc.

11:30 HPC Trends from the Trenches
This talk will review some of the BioTeam’s recent work with biotech, pharmaceutical, government and enterprise clients. As an independent consulting firm, the BioTeam is able to see how HPC problems in life science infor-matics have been approached by organizations of varying type and size. We will address common problems and observed trends in computing, workflows and data movement, along with details on particularly clever solutions observed in production environments around the world.
Chris Dagdigian, Founding Partner and Director of Technology, BioTeam, Inc.

12:00 pm Computing Architectures for Large-Scale Proteomics 
Proteomics technology is used to systematically identify and characterize proteins and their modifications within biological samples. It holds great promise to uncover medical breakthroughs at the molecular level, but requires unprecedented complex pattern matching in order to match the profile of a protein fragment to a subsequence within a protein sequence dataset. Special computing architectures have been developed to address the high-throughput analysis needs, some using FPGAs and multi-core CPUs. Here we present the algorithmic challenges and the architectures used to solve them.
David Chiang, CEO, R&D, Sage-N Research, Inc.

1:45 Re-wiring R&D: An Informatics Infrastructure for the Future Ready R&D Organization
Mandar Ghatnekar, Principal, Infosys Consulting
Traditional drug discovery processes are changing rapidly. Instead of a linear progression from the target to the final, optimized lead with little interaction between the different disciplines involved, modern discovery demands closer inter-disciplinary collaboration and easy access to diverse data sets for making quick, informed decisions. The traditional infrastructure of fixed legacy applications and siloed data sources are an impediment for organizations that want to make the switch. The presentation will discuss a cutting edge architecture that will allow scientists to collaborate seamlessly, manage the data glut and arrive at results faster. This flexible and reliable architecture - Agile R&D - draws value from emerging research models such as translational research, systems biology, genomics and other ‘omics by holistically exploiting the levers of process, technology and data in new ways. This talk will discuss a roadmap to implement the Agile R&D architecture, based on our experience in implementing it at a top pharma company.

2:15  The Cutting Edge Can Hurt You - Real World Integration Challenges in Building a Genomic Lab
Integrating next-generation sequencing instruments into a genomics lab is not a simple proposition. Questions of lab information management, networks, automated analysis, annotation, and data coherence loom large. The BioTeam has worked with several groups through this adoption period, performing requirements analysis, shap-ing technology choices, installing and configuring hardware, and developing custom software to build a coherent, usable system. This talk will share real-world experiences and specific insights into the challenges that many labs will face this year.
Chris Dwan, Director of Products and Principal Investigator, BioTeam, Inc.

2:45 Handling Data for High-Throughput, Large-Scale Projects
This session brings together data experts to discuss the data management challenges of the life sciences in com-parison with other research disciplines. We will explore IT solutions from both academic and commercial re-search platforms. The applicability of data management solutions from other industries will be discussed for problems facing data architects in the Life Sciences today. We will share best practices and case study examples.
James Reaney, Director, Research Markets, BlueArc Corporation
Mike Feuerstein, Technical Services Storage Lead, Cray, Inc.
David Parker, Director, Information Systems, Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center

3:45 Refreshment Break, Exhibit and Dedicated Poster Viewing

4:15  A Google Approach to Universal Search for Life Sciences

While life sciences is an information-intensive industry, finding information inside the enterprise is not always the simplest of tasks.   Researchers spend considerable time looking for past experiment data, scientific names of drugs, clinical trials documents, and a myriad of other documents.  Enterprise search is an emerging technology whereby researchers and other knowledge workers can instantly find any and all documents within the enterprise through a simple search.  As the leader in search technology, Google has developed universal search for enterprises, which provides the ability to search all enterprise content – including intranets, file shares, databases, real-time business data, and content management systems –through one simple search box.  Learn how this universal search can benefit pharma organizations, improve productivity and collaboration, and provide value.  
Paul Souza, Enterprise Sales Manager, Google Enterprise
William Gray, Web Technology Engineering, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals

Nick Fiekowsky, Enterprise Consultant of Network Strategy, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals

4:45 Innovation for IT Managers
Innovation is the process of creating MEASURABLE economic value from a product or service. It requires IT managers to build high-performance organizations, learn how to define and execute on customer requirements, and to develop continuous quality improvement processes to measure the performance and value of information systems. This discussion will focus on the definition of innovation for IT managers, provide examples of innova-tion inside and outside biosciences and healthcare, and introduce methods and tools to encourage IT profession-als to contribute to innovation in their enterprises. The complex interactions among critical success factors, the engineering organization, definitions of failure and success, requirements management, and continuous quality improvement will be discussed. Our goal is to help an IT manager understand what innovation means for his or her organization, how to design a high-performance organization, and measure its results and successes. Strate-gically, our goal is to help the biosciences avoid the process and engineering failures experienced in other indus-tries. 
Bernard Wess, President, ProtonCare and PERSEID Software

5:15-6:15 2008 Best of Show Awards/Reception in the Exhibit Hall

6:15 Exhibit Hall Closes

7:00 2008 Bio-IT World’s Best Practices Awards/Dinner

7:30 am Registration and Morning Coffee

8:00 Event Chairperson’s Opening Remarks
Kevin Davies, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief, Bio-IT World 

Keynote Introduction: 
Ron Ranauro, President and CEO, GenomeQuest, Inc. 

8:05 Personalized Genetics: Advancements & Driving Change
Linda Avey, co-Founder, 23andMe, Inc.

8:45 The Future of Personal Genomics George Church, Ph.D., Professor of Genetics and Director of the Center for Computational Genetics, Harvard Medical School Dietrich Stephan, Ph.D., Co-founder and Chief Science Officer, Navigenics, Inc. Jeffrey M. Drazen, M.D., Editor-in-Chief, New England Journal of Medicine; Distinguished Parker B. Francis Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School Fred D. Ledley, MD, Professor and Chair, Bentley College; Founder and Chairman, My Genome John Halamka, MD, MS, CIO, Harvard MedicalSchool Linda Avey, co-Founder, 23andMe, Inc.

9:45 Coffee Break, Exhibit Viewing, Vendor Theater Presentations, and Poster Competition in the Exhibit Hall

10:45 Track Chairperson’s Remarks

11:00 Enabling the Molecular Medicine Revolution: Getting Connected with caBIG 
Joint with Track 5
This talk will explore strategies for embracing evidence-based patient care using the cancer Biomedical Informat-ics Grid, or caBIG. caBIG is an unprecedented initiative led by the NCI to create a seamless technology network that accelerates information and data translation, and enables molecular approaches to research, as well as adaptive clinical trials. caBIG connects its collaborators as a voluntary, open-source network of infrastructure, tools, and ideas that enables the collection, analysis, and sharing of data and knowledge along the entire re-search pathway from laboratory bench to patient bedside. This discussion will illustrate how IT is bridging the gap between clinical and research informatics.
Kenneth Buetow, Ph.D., Director, NCI Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology, National Cancer Institute 

11:30 Designing a Bioinformatics Data Warehouse Using Pentaho 
Several databases exist at the UNC Lineberger Cancer Center that maintain information about tissue samples, microarray data and analysis, and clinical information about cancer patients. A new data warehouse, being im-plemented with the open-source Pentaho data warehouse suite, will ultimately integrate information from these disparate data sources. The experiences gained from integrating these data sources with Pentaho will be de-scribed.
David Jordan, Research Associate, Bioinformatics Group, Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

12:00 pm Driving BioPharma Innovation
A major inhibitor to innovation is the glut of systems and data that researchers must plow through on a daily ba-sis. Utilizing systems that leverage open architectures and open standards allows researchers to focus on the results of the data instead of the system. This talk will look at some cutting-edge proposals and directions that the industry is moving towards, including a reference architecture called the “Scientist Workbench” that inte-grates information from bench equipment, provides visualization and analysis capabilities, and provides a mecha-nism for reporting results into Portfolio Management reports.
Les Jordan, Industry Technology Strategist, Life Sciences, Microsoft Corp.

12:30 Luncheon in the Exhibit Hall

2:00 Exhibit Hall Closes

2:00 A Community-Based Collaborative Drug Discovery Platform for Neglected Infectious Diseases and Cancer
A community-based platform is being used openly to help develop new treatments for neglected infectious dis-eases such as malaria, Chagas Disease, and African Sleeping Sickness and securely against commercial cancer targets. This new collaborative technology allows researchers to build up networks of technical experts around therapeutic or target areas, facilitating discovery of new drug candidates. It allows scientists to accelerate research by simultaneously sharing unpublished data in the race to overcome drug resistance. Case studies from collaborative groups and the search for drug candidates for commercial and humanitarian markets will be presented. 
Barry Bunin, Ph.D., CEO & President, Management, Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc.

2:30 Using Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) to Manage Biobank Privacy Data 
The Taiwan Biobank collects biological materials, tracks clinical outcomes and obtains longitudinal information for population genetic analyses and disease progression studies. This project uses a state-of-the-art SOA design for flexible privacy data management. It was initiated with a pilot study in 2005, with 15,000 participants and sub-sequently increased to 200,000 participants. The IT platform was designed to foster the exchange of information between electronic health records, subject coding systems, demographic information, genetic profiles, and labo-ratory processes. Here we will discuss the benefits of SOA design for privacy data management, the imperatives for IT infrastructure, and technologies to address these requirements.
Belinda Chen, Ph.D., Deputy Director, Innovative DigiTech-Enabled Applications & Services Institute (IDEAS), In-stitute for Information Industry

3:00 GRID Computing and Storage Design for Life Sciences Operations 
The IT team for the J. Craig Venter Institute has been researching ways to remove IT obstacles that hinder the pace of genomics research. Here we describe the institute’s storage and grid environment, and discuss the chal-lenges involved in designing infrastructures for such dynamic workloads, including lessons learned and practices adopted to optimize growth. We will also discuss emerging technologies such as storage grids, virtualization, thin provisioning and their impact on the evolving role of IT in the life sciences.
Vadim Sapiro, Vice President for IT, J. Craig Venter Institute

3:30 Using Scientific Business Intelligence to Drive Decisions
Frank Brown, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer, Accelrys
Information and not data alone can help drive processes and make informed decisions. The use of scientific business intelligence solutions can be instrumental in this process. By integrating these solutions as part of your discovery and scientific operating & intelligence processes, you’ll efficiently capture, model & simulate, visualize, analyze, format, aggregate, normalize, mine, and store data and produce customized reports. This talk will discuss ways to maximize your probability of success, decision making and productivity by applying such solutions and improved data models. Practical case studies will be illustrated along with ample examples, including image and lab data integration.

4:00 Conference Adjourns