At all large technology companies, innovation dies. Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, Intuit may claim to invent. But year after year, their ostensibly new products are indistinguishable from older ones. Could any ordinary human differentiate between phones or PCs from 2005 and 2010? Which are more glaring: the engineered security holes in Adobe's Flash plugin, or the file synchronization…more...

Some contract research organizations (CRO) had to be dragged into using technology. They presented at conferences, pooh-poohing software. They doubted, delayed, complained. They did not necessarily advocate fountain pens and carrier pigeons. But they could quote a price on ink and birdseed. And then there are people like Jules Mitchel, president of Target Health. He delights in…more...

History records that after her husband was assassinated, someone asked Mrs. Abraham Lincoln about the theatrical production she had just seen. With all deference to Mrs. Lincoln, we are in a similarly stunned state of mind after talking to Kit Howard, principal of Kestrel Consultants. Based in Michigan, with a Canadian's calm demeanor, Howard speaks in methodical,…more...

While it supports a cottage industry of professionals, manually pushing piles of clinical trial data along from one system to the next isn't necessarily the most efficient way of doing things. The same company may map data for the same drug in different ways in different trials—or miss errors in one trial's data set that were fixed…more...