I’ve been following the 23andMe saga with dread and fascination and frustration since it hit in late November. If you’re not up to date, David Dobbs has the canonical collection of stories to get you there. This is a post about business models and culture clashes. It’s long. I should also start by disclosing that my former … Continue reading “FDA’s Culture Is Genetically Dominant Over 23andMe’s Business Model”
Author: John Wilbanks
John Wilbanks is a data commons expert and advocate who has spent his career working to advance open content, open data, and open innovation systems. He is a senior fellow at FasterCures and chief commons officer at Sage Bionetworks. Wilbanks also serves as a senior fellow at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and as a senior advisor for big data to the National Coordination Office. Previously, Wilbanks worked as a legislative aide to Congressman Fortney "Pete" Stark, served as the first assistant director at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, founded and led to acquisition bioinformatics company Incellico, Inc., and was vice president of science at Creative Commons. In February 2013, the U.S. government responded to a We the People petition spearheaded by Wilbanks and signed by 65,000 people, and announced a plan to open up taxpayer-funded research data and make it available for free. Wilbanks received his bachelor of arts in philosophy from Tulane University.
Pharma Showing Interest in Open Systems for Drug Discovery
[Editor’s note: this post first appeared on the FasterCures blog.] Bringing the ideas of “open source” into the pharmaceutical process is far from simple. It requires a careful understanding both of the realities of open source as a software development process well as the realities of therapy research, development, and regulatory approval. The open source … Continue reading “Pharma Showing Interest in Open Systems for Drug Discovery”
Understanding Open Science
The dream of getting to cures, faster, is one shared by many. But every new instrument we’ve invented to examine the human body has shown us only more complexity and interconnection. The failure of all of our new technologies to translate rapidly into drugs has demonstrated that we’re the folks in the parking lot looking under the lamppost … Continue reading “Understanding Open Science”