By Jim Bertler on
2/28/2008 10:11 AM
Scientists at Wake Forest University plan to start offering a new gene test for prostate cancer risk within months.
The test screens men's blood or saliva samples for five genetic variants linked to prostate cancer. Once those blood or saliva samples arrive at the researchers' lab, the test takes about a week.
"The genetic findings in our paper can be used now, and we plan to make the test available in the next few months," says Jianfeng Xu, MD, DrPH, of Wake Forest's Center for Human Genomics, in a statement from Wake Forest University.
This is a great advancement in medicine due to the large number of men who worry about getting prostate cancer.
|
By Jim Bertler on
2/28/2008 9:56 AM
A South Korean biotechnology company said it received its first order to clone a pet animal and, if successful, aims to begin full commercial service next year.
RNL Bio Co., a firm affiliated with the Seoul National University stem-cell-research lab that produced the first cloned dog in 2005, took the order last week.
|
By Jim Bertler on
2/28/2008 9:52 AM
The Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising and Communications site stated that the direct-to-consumer television advertisement user fee program was being canceled due to the funds were not provided in advance.
President Bush added a provision in the Prescription Drug User Fee Act that stating if the FDA did not raise at least 11.2 million in review fees by January 25, 2008 the program would be null and void.
The FDA did not meet their financial requirements to the FDA scraped the program, at least for now.
Check out the FDA release statement here.
|
By Jim Bertler on
2/27/2008 1:39 PM
Welcome to the first official Cornerstone Solutions blog. In our blog we will discuss the Microsoft business applications. Specifically, we will cover SharePoint and the Dynamics platform including Microsoft CRM and Microsoft Great Plains. Our goal is to create a forum to allow people to exchange ideas and information. In addition, we plan to link out to other sites so we provide our opinions as well as the thoughts and ideas of other industry leaders.
I hope you will check back with us often because no blog is successful without input and comments from others.
Look for an RSS feed to be installed soon so you can receive automatic updates!
|
By Jim Bertler on
2/27/2008 1:27 PM
Contract research organizations use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to help make decisions on clinical trial feasibility within minutes instead of weeks.
A contract research organization or a CRO is a third party that pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies hire to help them pass the pre-clinical and clinical trial process. During the clinical trial process the CRO needs to hold in-human clinical trial studies. These studies are managed and reported on by physicians and hospital staff which have to be selected by the CRO. In order for the CRO to interview the physician their needs to be a large database or way of listing and searching a group of physicians to properly recruit for the clinical trial.
The methodology that CROs are using for this system is to create the account as the pharmaceutical company and the physician as the contact in the system. When a clinical trial is initiated an opportunity (clinical tr ...
Read More »
|
By Jim Bertler on
2/27/2008 1:21 PM
As many of you know Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 was released a while ago. Just as with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 this release of SharePoint has created a huge buzz in marketplace. There are many uses for SharePoint, and as we wrote in previous newsletters companies are using it as a document management solution or a company intranet. All of those documents and information can now be stored in a more organized manner.
Another exciting use of SharePoint is the social networking avenue. This article written by CIO insight discusses SharePoint becoming a social networking tool for corporations. It is definitely an interesting concept and an exciting use of SharePoint!
All of this begs the question.. How are you using SharePoint?
|
By Jim Bertler on
2/27/2008 1:17 PM
In our blog we will cover exciting topics as well as mundane, but important items. Today's topic definitely falls into the mundane, but important category. The topic is backups.
We have noticed on a regular basis that some of our clients do not have adequate backups. We always ensure that an initial backup plan is in place when we implement, but often times the overall infrastructure changes and backups do not get adjusted.
Imagine if you lost all of your Microsoft Dynamics GP data and had no backup in place!
At a minimum, we recommend nightly backups kept on-site and weekly backups off-site. The off-site requirement can be as simple as a key employee or owner taking a tape home on a weekly basis. Of course, there are more sophisticated ways, but this method still fits the bill.
So please, check you bac ...
Read More »
|
By Jim Bertler on
2/27/2008 1:15 PM
Obviously, one of the hottest topics in the Microsoft CRM world today is the release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. Many people might have heard of this project as "Titan" which is the code name Microsoft has given the project internally. The questions everyone asks is "What is coming in the new release and when is it coming".
As far as when, the best guess is late 2007 or early 2008. I have my fingers crossed for late 2007.
Microsoft has kept the "what" pretty quiet, but the two major areas of the release are multi-tenancy and a hosted version. Multi-tenancy refers to several things including being able to run multiple CRM databases on one CRM server, running Microsoft CRM in multiple languages and having multi-currency capability.
The hosted version of Microsoft CRM is called Microsoft CR ...
Read More »
|
By Jim Bertler on
2/27/2008 12:34 PM
Personal health information is hard for anyone to effectively manage. The information that is in the hands of your physician can be trusted but the sharing and collaboration of that information becomes complicated. This problem leads to disseminated health information broken up between your various physicians. It also makes it very annoying to the individual to write an entire health history before they visit a specialist outside of their primary care physician or change their physician.
Microsoft has developed a technology platform called HealthVault, a storage and sharing system that uses privacy and security-enhanced measures, and through which people can interact with health-related services and devices. HealthVault will bring the health and technology industries together to place people in control of their healthcare while enabling seamless exchange of information among hundreds of health services and devices.
Microsoft< ...
Read More »
|
By Jim Bertler on
2/27/2008 9:49 AM
According to an analysis by the American Diabetes Association (ADA), diabetes is costing the U.S. more than $174 billion per year.
A study conducted by the Lewin Group, an auditing firm, points out that this number is not a direct cost associated to the disease but a cost that comes from complications like eye disease, amputations and kidney failure.
Many studies have shown that problems with obesity are direct contributors to this disease.
For more information on the web about this subject click here.
|