Software Applications and Services

Develop Stable Software Application Architecture to Add Value to All Ecosystem Stakeholders

May 17 - 18, 2023 ALL TIMES EDT

The Software Applications and Services track explores how biopharma companies are driving data strategies and scientific decision-making by optimizing release management, automated testing, and leveraging software architecture tools and development trends. As life sciences and healthcare evolves, so will apps and services. What tools are available for developing apps and services? How much personalized software development for an individual company is useful/needed? Software serves as a foundation for innovation. The more stable the software application architecture is, the more it can add value to an ecosystem of stakeholders. Case studies will be presented on software tools to facilitate data manipulation, data analytics approaches, data methods and standards approaches, transparency, efficiency, security, and cost-effective solutions.

Monday, May 15

– 6:00 pm Hackathon*8:00 am

*Separate Complimentary Registration Required, see Hackathon page to submit your project OR register to participate

– 5:00 PM Registration Open – Come Early and Avoid the Lines2:00 pm

Tuesday, May 16

Registration Open7:00 am

Recommended Pre-Conference Workshops and Symposia*8:00 am

On Tuesday, May 16, 2023 Cambridge Healthtech Institute is pleased to offer nine pre-conference workshops scheduled across three time slots (8:00-10:00 am, 10:30 am-12:30 pm, and 1:45-3:45 pm) and two Symposia from 8:25 am-3:45 pm. All are designed to be instructional, interactive and provide in-depth information on a specific topic. They allow for one-on-one interaction and provide a great way to explain more technical aspects that would otherwise not be covered during the main conference tracks that take place Wednesday-Thursday.

*Separate registration required. For details, see Workshop agendas, FAIR Data Symposium agenda, and Knowledge Graphs Symposium agenda.

– 3:45 pm Hackathon*8:00 am

*Separate Complimentary Registration Required, see Hackathon page to submit your project OR register to participate

Refreshment Break and Transition to Plenary Keynote3:45 pm

PLENARY KEYNOTE PROGRAM

4:00 pm

Plenary Keynote Organizer's Remarks

Cindy Crowninshield, Executive Event Director, Cambridge Healthtech Institute

4:05 pm

Innovative Practices Awards

Joseph Cerro, Independent Consultant

Chris Dwan, Independent Consultant, Dwan, LLC

Allison Proffitt, Editorial Director, Bio-IT World

The Innovative Practices Awards recognizes and celebrates innovation that advances life sciences research. Bio-IT World is currently accepting entries for the 2023 Innovative Practices Awards, a competition designed to recognize partnerships and projects pushing our industry forward. Winners will be announced in mid-April 2023, recognized during the Tuesday May 16 Plenary Keynote Program, and scheduled to give a 30-minute podium presentation about their project during the conference. The deadline for entry is March 3, 2023. For more details about the Awards and to submit an application, visit the official Bio-IT World Innovative Practices Awards page: https://www.bio-itworld.com/Award/.

4:20 pm Plenary Keynote Introduction

David Gosalvez, PhD, Executive Director, Strategy & Informatics Portfolio, Revvity Signals

4:30 pm PLENARY KEYNOTE PRESENTATION:

The Promise of Data, Analytics, and Technology: Fueling Scientific and Medical Breakthroughs

Anastasia Christianson, PhD, Vice President, Global Head of AI, ML, Analytics, and Data, Pfizer Inc.

Edward Cox, Head & General Manager, Digital Health & Medicines (DHM), Pfizer Inc.

The 21st century has been referred to as the Century of Biology. With 90% of the world’s 97 zettabytes of data generated in the past 2 years and 30% of today’s data being healthcare related, how are we using data technology and advanced analytics (artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning) to advance our understanding of disease and deliver “breakthroughs that change patients' lives?”

Welcome Reception in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing5:45 pm

Close of Day7:00 pm

Wednesday, May 17

Registration and Morning Coffee7:00 am

PLENARY KEYNOTE PROGRAM

8:00 am

Plenary Keynote Organizer's Remarks

Allison Proffitt, Editorial Director, Bio-IT World

8:05 am PLENARY KEYNOTE INTRODUCTION:

Life Science Automation Opportunities – So Many Options, So Little Time

Santanu Sen, Vice President, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Virtusa

The COVID pandemic has demonstrated that therapies and vaccines can be developed in 18 months with a high degree of safety and efficacy. Pioneering work done by companies involved has shed light to archaic processes that have been in existence for decades with little need for change.  In this presentation, we will discuss collaborative efforts, enabling technologies, regulation, and workflow to automate these processes to advance personalized medicine initiatives.

8:15 am PLENARY KEYNOTE PRESENTATION:

Federated Futures: How the Largest Federated Learning Effort in Medicine Will Inform Our Next Steps

Spyridon Bakas, PhD, Assistant Professor, Radiology & Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

Raymond Y. Huang, MD, PhD, Division Chief, Neuroradiology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Associate Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School

Jason Martin, Principal Engineer AI Research Science, Security Solutions Lab, Intel Labs

Is a federated learning model sufficient to handle data from 71 institutions and more than 6,000 patients located on six continents? Researchers from Penn Medicine and Intel Labs say yes. An interdisciplinary team created the largest to-date global federated learning effort to develop an accurate and generalizable machine learning model for detecting glioblastoma borders. We will share what we learned about creating and maintaining such a federation, how the software infrastructure evolved over the course of the study, and how this work will empower the future of high-quality, precision clinical care worldwide.

Coffee Break in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing9:30 am

Organizer's Welcome Remarks10:15 am

TOOLS, MODELS, AND PROCESSES TO SUPPORT INTEGRATION AND IMPLEMENTATION NEEDS

10:20 am

Chairperson's Remarks

Rishi R. Gupta, PhD, Associate Director, Data Science, Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research

10:25 am

Cortex: Informatics Ecosystem Supporting End-to-End Data Automation and Integration

Holmfridur Thorsteindottir, PhD, Head, Clinical & Biomarker Informatics, Roche Pharma

We present a novel informatics ecosystem that supports end-to-end FAIR data integration in clinical studies.  We use an example of biosample and biomarker processes to show how our ecosystem provides a flexible way to plan, define, ingest, quality check, store and share data from complex, largely outsourced clinical studies. We also show how we can enable efficient sample tracking, provide data analysis capabilities and offer a variety of scientific dashboards to provide a real-time insights of the status of ongoing studies.

10:55 am

CanvasXpress: Convert Every Data Visualization into a Full Fledge Data Analytics Application with Zero Extra Coding

Isaac Neuhaus, PhD, Senior Director Computational Genomics, Translational Bioinformatics, Bristol Myers Squibb Co.

The three most important aspects to consider when it comes to trying a new software product are: price, ease of implementation, and value-added. In this presentation, I will show how to convert every data visualization created in JavaScript, R, or Python into a complete and unobtrusive data analytics platform without the need for extra coding.

11:25 am

Global Digital Manifold (GDM): Framework to Share Computational Chemistry Tools

Rishi R. Gupta, PhD, Associate Director, Data Science, Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research

A core component of the CADD software strategy, Global Digital Manifold (GDM) is a high performing web-based application built around the concept of sharing a variety of best-in-breed computational chemistry tools without having to learn intricacies of each and avoid using multiple versions of shell scripts. GDM has allowed us to deploy a variety of tools such as generative chemistry (AI/ML), molecular dynamics, conformer generation, and docking. With some of these tools requiring more compute resources than others, GDM has been enabled to seamlessly switch between on-prem HPC to Cloud. In addition, this talk will also discuss a novel concept called "conveyors" available within GDM that allows flowgramming several tools together. These features have not only allowed better sharing, but higher adoption of in silico methods.

11:55 am The Secret Names of Things: How FAIR Metadata Can Make or Break a Drug Discovery Program

Mark Fortner, CEO, Aspen Biosciences

The drug discovery process requires multi-disciplinary teams to clearly communicate. What happens when they don’t have a shared vocabulary? What is required in terms of people, process, and technology to create and maintain that shared vocabulary, and to make it easily accessible and ubiquitous? We examine a case study, show the lessons learned, and how these lessons were applied in Aspen Biosciences Drug Discovery Program Management software suite known as Pipeline.

 
12:10 pm Streamlining Collaboration and Drug Development Using CDD Vault

Kelly Bachovchin, PhD, Customer Engagement Scientist, Customer Support, Collaborative Drug Discovery

Collaborative Drug Discovery (CDD) provides a whole solution for today’s biological and chemical data needs, differentiated by ease-of-use and superior collaborative capabilities. CDD Vault®, a cloud-based software, includes Activity & Registration, Visualization, Inventory, and ELN capabilities.   Researchers can archive, mine, and securely collaborate within CDD Vault.  Collaborative hypothesis generation and evaluation allow multiple perspectives for multi-parameter optimization.

12:25 pm

Roche’s MLOps Journey – From Diversity to Value

Richipal Bindra, Enterprise Architect - Analytics and Machine Learning, Roche Diagnostics

At Roche we have started a journey towards an MLOps Reference Architecture to help accelerate innovation, reduce time to market, pave the way for new businesses, and contribute to customer/patient satisfaction. It provides the underlying technological capabilities and good practices to enable all steps and activities in the ML lifecycle. We start by learning from our diverse MLOps implementations and move towards a few well-defined, reusable, and supported reference architectures.

Session Break and Transition to Luncheon Presentation12:55 pm

Luncheon Presentation (Sponsorship Opportunity Available) or Enjoy Lunch on Your Own1:05 pm

Refreshment Break in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing1:50 pm

TOOLS, MODELS, AND PROCESSES TO SUPPORT INTEGRATION AND IMPLEMENTATION NEEDS

2:35 pm

Chairperson's Remarks

Wouter Franke, Strategic Data Consultant, The Hyve

2:40 pm

Integrating the Research Landscape: A Journey to Integrate Research Applications through APIs and Events at Scale

Matthieu Croissant, Scientific Solution Architect, Roche Pharma

Numerous presentations are made on the need to bring down silos and make data accessible to foster a greater collaboration culture. This talk will share the various tooling and patterns put in place at pRED to address the ever-growing number of vendor and custom solution integration needs.

3:10 pm

Connecting Virtual Reality to Cloud-Based Computing to Develop Intuitive Software for Virtual Surgery

Amanda Randles, PhD, Alfred Winborne Mordecai and Victoria Stover Mordecai Assistant Professor, Biomedical Sciences, Duke University; Fellow, National Academy of Inventors (NAI)

Creating high-fidelity digital twins of a patient’s vasculature provides a non-invasive means to measure blood flow conditions. Such models are gaining traction for determining the severity of stenosis and guiding treatment decisions. As we see an increased use of computational flow models for virtual surgery and treatment planning, there is an increased need to address two key challenges: providing an intuitive means for interaction and minimizing the computational burden. In our work, we are developing a framework for combining virtual reality interfaces with large-scale, parallel fluid mechanics modeling packages and using cloud-based resources. Virtual immersive environments can offer advantageous visualization of spatially heterogeneous and complex systems. However, as different VR devices offer varying levels of immersion, there remains a crucial lack of understanding regarding what level of immersion is best suited for interactions with patient-specific flow models. Here, I will talk about how we evaluate optimal immersion for different tasks and our experiences connecting the virtual reality software to a cloud-enabled backend for fluid simulation.

3:40 pm

Getting Ready for FAIR Chemical Structure Handling

Gunther Dörnen, Senior Scientific Software Engineer, Roche Pharma

FAIR data handing is the basic requirement for successful data processing in the research area of the pharmaceutical industry. Effective ML/AI need Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable data to increase the data product within the research process. In terms of the administration of the steadily increasing number of chemical structures and their related data the normalization of the chemical drawings plays a central role in the data capturing of the research work. The growing requirements of the normalization systems makes it necessary to update the technical systems to modern highly efficient data management systems. To reach this goal Roche updated its structure normalization tools from the formerly used Cheshire to the BIOVIA Pipeline Pilot Chemical SDK using a cloud native technology stack. This talk illustrates the new IT architecture and reports the issues that have arisen during the implementation project.

4:10 pm

A Two Way Trip from FAIRPort to FAIR

Wouter Franke, Strategic Data Consultant, The Hyve

Nine years ago, the FAIR principles were first discussed as basis for a FAIRPort, a FAIR Infrastructure for heterogenous data. A lot has happened in those nine years, and we ask ourselves the question: did we achieve machine-actionable data environments in this time? And if not, where should we be working on together to create FAIR infrastructures?

Best of Show Awards Reception in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing4:40 pm

Close of Day6:00 pm

Thursday, May 18

Registration and Morning Coffee7:30 am

PLENARY KEYNOTE PROGRAM

8:00 am

Plenary Keynote Organizer's Remarks

Cindy Crowninshield, Executive Event Director, Cambridge Healthtech Institute

Plenary Keynote Sponsor Introduction (Opportunity Available)8:05 am

8:15 am PLENARY PANEL DISCUSSION:

Assessing Innovation: How Pharma Makes Tech Investment Decisions

PANEL MODERATOR:

Aaron Mann, CEO, Clinical Research Data Sharing Alliance

This panel session will assemble senior leaders who evaluate new technology adoption. We will hold an interactive discussion to help provide transparency in the evaluation and decision-making process for assessing and investing in new technologies. Themes we will cover include: 1) process for evaluating, piloting, and scaling new technologies and technology approaches; 2) how an organization evaluates an emerging technology vendor landscape; 3) when and how a formal buying process becomes required, and 4) identifying key stakeholders, decision-makers, and gatekeepers. 

PANELISTS:

April Bingham, Executive Director, Global Medical Compliance and Governance Chapter, Roche

Peter Mesenbrink, PhD, Executive Director, Biostatistics, Novartis Pharmaceuticals

Maria Palombini, Global Practice Leader, Healthcare & Life Sciences, IEEE Standards Association

Laszlo Vasko, Senior Director, Clinical Innovation R&D IT, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Coffee Break in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing9:30 am

Organizer's Remarks10:15 am

DRIVING DIGITIZATION, WORKFLOWS, AND SCIENTIFIC DECISION-MAKING

10:20 am

Chairperson's Remarks

Gurpreet Kanwar, Senior Manager Programs, Portfolio Delivery Group, NAV CANADA

10:25 am

Building Robust Data Management into Life Sciences Applications

Rachana Ananthakrishnan, Executive Director, Globus, University of Chicago

Research data portals, science gateways, data commons, and web applications need scalable, secure data management solutions. The Globus platform as a service enables application developers to provide robust file transfer, data sharing, search, and automation capabilities within their own life science research data applications and services, while leveraging advanced identity management, single sign-on, and authorization capabilities. The platform is built on widely adopted industry standards such as OAuth and OpenID Connect for authentication/authorization, and uses trusted protocols such as GridFTP and HTTPS. By outsourcing research data management to Globus, developers can focus their efforts on core application logic.

10:55 am

Scientific Workflow Management for Protein Sciences Core Labs

Hong Ky Vo, Senior Software Engineer, gRED Research Informatics & Software Engineering, Genentech, Inc.

The Protein Sciences core labs in Genentech’s research departments engineer, produce, and manage large molecules for many scientific purposes. These core labs have to manage the many workflow processes at various stages and collaborate with each other and with the end users. A Protein and Antibody Request System (PARS) was created to simplify and coordinate molecule production processes in a centralized and collaborative tool.

11:25 am

Making Your Software Application Releases Easier & Quicker

Gurpreet Kanwar, Senior Manager Programs, Portfolio Delivery Group, NAV CANADA

This presentation will show how to make your software releases less riskier, while using Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Align development, testing and release management teams. Streamline the development and release process to meet delivery dates consistently while aligning the software objectives with business. Learn 1) the importance of acceptance criteria and how to make release when requirements are not well defined, 2) how to standardize the releases across your organization, 3) what minimum work needs to be done before releasing the software application, and 4) how to control releases.

11:55 am

Data on Pathomechanisms vs Healthy Behaviour – What Else Do We Need to Develop Digital Twins in Biomedicine?

Dan Isaacs, CTO, Digital Twin Consortium

Cezary Mazurek, PhD, Director, Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center

One approach that can significantly improve the execution of medical experiments is the use of digital twin solutions. A digital twin is a virtual model dynamically linked to its physical original. This technology is dynamically entering the field of health applications and can lead to a radical transformation of traditional methods — including the conduct of medical experiments. Thanks to it, we can already rapidly gain new knowledge about the causes of disease development and determine personalised prevention, prediction, and therapy. In this context, there are also new opportunities for global collaboration, data sharing and the provision of an innovative software stack within a global cyber-infrastructure to manage and preserve this research work and make it available according to FAIR principles. In this presentation, we will address these trends by presenting examples of existing solutions and biomedical research experiments using machine learning.

Session Break and Transition to Luncheon Presentation12:55 pm

Luncheon Presentation (Sponsorship Opportunity Available) or Enjoy Lunch on Your Own1:05 pm

Refreshment Break in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing1:50 pm

TRENDS FROM THE TRENCHES

2:35 pm

Chairperson's Remarks

Ari E. Berman, PhD, CEO, BioTeam, Inc.

2:40 pm

Trends from the Trenches

Ari E. Berman, PhD, CEO, BioTeam, Inc.

Adam Kraut, Director, Infrastructure & Cloud Architecture, BioTeam, Inc.

Anna Sowa, PhD, Senior Scientific Consultant, BioTeam, Inc.

Since 2010, the “Trends from the Trenches” presentation has been one of the most popular annual traditions of the Bio-IT Program. The intent of the session is to deliver a candid (and occasionally blunt) assessment of the best, the most worthwhile, and the most overhyped information technologies (IT) for life sciences. The presentation has helped scientists, leadership, and IT professionals understand the basic topics related to computing, storage, data transfer, networks, cloud, data science, and machine learning that are involved in supporting data-intensive science. In 2023, consultants from BioTeam will give an overview of the trending issues in life sciences. An interactive Q&A moderated discussion with the audience follows. Come prepared with your questions and commentary for this informative and lively session.

Close of Conference4:10 pm






Register

Conference Tracks

Data Platforms & Storage Infrastructure