Microsoft ($MSFT) gave kudos to a trio of drugmakers--Novartis ($NVS), Sanofi ($SNY) and Bristol-Myers Squibb ($BMY)--and their technology partners, pointing out how Microsoft's software platforms were used successfully in the biopharma business.
These awards are probably most valuable to the life sciences software vendors battling for market share than the drug behemoths. But here's where the software giant's 2012 Microsoft Life Sciences Innovation Awards went:
Bristol-Myers Squibb and Data Intelligence won a nod from Microsoft for Bristol's use of Data Intelligence's PharmaCoach sales force training system. The software uses Microsoft's Silverlight 5 and SQL Server 2008, and Bristol's U.K. group to beat budget targets with the help of the training tool.
Novartis gained attention at Microsoft for its pioneering use of clinical trials software on Windows-based tablet PCs from Winston-Salem, NC-based Clinical Ink (a FierceBiotech IT company to watch last year). With Clinical Ink's SureSource system, Novartis captured data from patients and made it available for analysis within 30 minutes compared with the standard 17 days.
Sanofi teamed up with softwaremaker DITA Exchange to overhaul content management at the Big Pharma outfit. Sanofi's structured content management (SCM) system, which makes use of Microsoft's SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise and SQL Server 2008, enabled the drug giant to streamline submission of documents to key stakeholders and ultimately reduce costs, according to Microsoft.
- see Microsoft's blog
- here's Clinical Ink's release
- and a release from DITA Exchange