A tiny Canadian firm, Consilient, hopes to provide cheaper email to handheld computers like Palms and cell phones. Consilient is a partner with RIM, the company responsible for the Blackberry devices, and says its latest product, Consilient Push, can drive down the monthly cost of wireless email to $3 to… more...

Pharsight’s Senior Scientist Yuying Gao, M.D., Ph.D., will speak to members of the Japanese pharmaceutical industry attending the 28th mini-symposium of the Department of Molecular Pharmacokinetics, to be held at the University of Tokyo on March 23, 2006. Dr. Gao will give a presentation on the strategic value of quantitative… more...

Ingenuity Systems today announced that it had expanded the terms of its agreement with Sanofi-Aventis in the U.S. Ingenuity Pathways Analysis (IPA) is a web-delivered software application that enables researchers to model, analyze and understand the complex biological systems at the core of life science research. IPA is deployed in… more...

IBM hopes to participate in the RFID market in a bigger way than previously. To test the radio tracking chips, the computer company has opened a 50,000 square foot test center in Dublin, Ireland. IBM hopes to tune its servers and WebSphere software to handle the rapid monitoring necessary at… more...

Affymetrix and Iconix will combine their efforts to provide tools to assess drug toxicity. The collaboration will combine Affymetrix’ GeneChip microarray technology with Iconix’ DrugMatrix 640 compound reference database and analysis software. Affymetrix’ arrays and Iconix’ analysis tools could provide detailed information on a drug candidate’s toxicological liabilities and pharmacological… more...

Software from TheraDoc (of Utah) and BioMetrieux (of France) is having an impressive effect on patient health. The two companies say their Stellara package, used for clinical intervention and patient monitoring, was used at Franciscan Health Systems in Tacoma, Washington. “We have experienced tremendous success with Stellara as our intelligent… more...

Does the world need more than one RFID (radio frequency identification) standard? Some in the industry think that separate schemes for every industry will lead to chaos. Some packages already have multiple bar codes. In the United States, pharmaceutical drugs have a National Drug Code. Tires have their own number.… more...

IMS, a leading market research firm, says U.S. prescription drug sales grew 5.4 percent to $251.8 billion in 2005. That compares to $238.9 billion in sales in 2004. The volume of total U.S. dispensed prescriptions was up significantly over 2004, growing 4.7 percent. “The pharmaceutical market continues to experience solid… more...

PhRMA released undated figures showing $39 billion in research and development spending in 2005. That’s a 5.4 percent increase from $37 billion in 2004. “America’s research-based biopharmaceutical companies once again lead the world in investing in the hunt for new cures and treatments. It is the most research-intensive industry in… more...

Standard & Poors says that the drug industry will have a good year despite public scrutiny of drug prices and generic competition. “Despite near-term uncertainties over pricing and patent expirations, we think pharmaceuticals remains one of the healthiest and widest-margin U.S. industries,” says Herman Saftlas, an S&P analyst. “We see… more...