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...

Phase Forward appointed J. Jay Volkert as manager of its government division at its Lincoln Technologies subsidiary. The company said Dr. Volkert has 25 years of experience in providing consulting and IT services to federal health care agencies. “Dr. Volkert’s extensive experience in the federal and health care sectors will…more...

Kendle International acquired a Latin American CRO. Kendle purchased International Clinical Research Ltd. and its affiliated companies, the company said in a news release. Terms were not disclosed. The purchase gives Kendle a new foothold in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Chile. The company already has operations in Mexico and Peru,…more...

DataTrak International of Cleveland, announced a new contract in Europe. A new client, Cosmo Technologies of Ireland, will use DataTrak software to run two Phase III trials for gastrointestinal drugs. The trials will recruit 650 patients using 230 users at 110 clinical sites. 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...

Phase Forward’s Paul Bleicher will join the board of Teranode Corporation, which develops experiment design automation software. “Paul’s perspectives on the Life Sciences market and strong relationships across the industry will be of enormous benefit to our customers,” said Joe Duncan, Teranode’s CEO. “As Teranode executes its next phase of…more...

Metadata—information about a particular document—was one of the surprises that has come back to haunt Merck in its Vioxx mess. Information that Merck employees thought they had deleted was in fact forwarded to a leading medical journal. Now Microsoft, in a forthcoming release of its operating system, will be taking…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...

Genzyme has stopped enrolling patients in a mid-stage heart cell therapy clinical trial on a recommendation that the study has a low likelihood of success. The study’s data monitoring committee suggested the trial’s hypothesized improvement in heart function would not be likely, given a review of data so far. The…more...