The Drug Information Association’s (DIA) 45th annual meeting in San Diego was the stage where Microsoft unveiled the winners of the 2009 Microsoft Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences Innovation Awards. These are designed to recognize members of the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry that have leveraged Microsoft technology for their efforts. There were no less than three categories: discovery and product innovation, sales and marketing, and clinical development, and just as many winners, the Redmond-based company informed.

“The companies recognized are examples of innovators who have developed technology solutions to address the major issues impacting the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry today,” explained Michael Naimoli, director of U.S. life sciences industry solutions at Microsoft. “By building upon the existing Microsoft software platform, this year’s winners demonstrated solutions that help streamline clinical trial and discovery processes to facilitate research and discovery, as well as improve the end user’s experience.”

HUNT Research Centre and Biobank was the recipient of the Discovery and Product Innovation Award. The software giant revealed that the Norway-based organization adopted the Thermo Scientific Nautilus Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) built on the .NET Framework, and leveraged Visual Studio in order to boost the reliability of its data for the research community. HUNT Research Centre and Biobank's research effort consists of three individual studies that focus on tracking the same patient population over 25 years.

Bristol-Myers Squibb with the Data Intelligence’s Business Intelligence Solution, PharmaANALYTICS SQL Server-based solution won the Sales and Marketing Award. The biopharmaceutical company leveraged the technology in order to perform management of sales and marketing for its presence in the UK.

Last but not least, the Harvard Clinical Research Institute with the TranSenda’s Office-Smart Clinical Trial Manager (OSCTM) designed to interoperate with the Office SharePoint System was recognized with the Clinical Development Award for the way it understood to use technology in order to centralize data from disparate systems.