The increasing importance of big data in health care was confirmed recently by LifeSciences BC when it awarded the Emerging Life Sciences Company of the Year award to a supercomputing startup.
Phemi Health Systems Inc. is not a traditional life sciences company. It has developed a big data analysis platform that holds promise for things like personalized medicine and medical research, and which is now being tested by St. Paul’s Hospital.
“As you think of genomics and the size of the data set that’s going to come out of genomics, Phemi is positioned beautifully to really take advantage of that,” said LifeSciences BC CEO Paul Drohan.
Phemi was among the award recipients honoured at LifeSciences BC’s annual awards April 23. The awards were emceed by Bob McDonald, host of CBC’s Quirks and Quarks.
Among the 470 people attending the awards were B.C. Health Minister Terry Lake and Technology Minister Andrew Wilkinson, as well as the People’s Republic of China’s consul for science and technology.
“We were thrilled because it signifies to us the importance that governments – not only our own but also international governments – see B.C. as a place where they want to be part of our growing cluster,” Drohan said.
Detailed coverage of some of this year’s awards recipients can be found in the annual LifeSciences magazine, which is now online.
Other LifeSciences BC award winners this year were:
- Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corp., Life Sciences Company of the Year;
- Robert Brunham, head of the Vaccine Research Laboratory and professor at UBC’s Department of Medicine, the Don Rix Lifetime Achievement award;
- John Webb, director for the Centre for Heart Valve Innovation at St. Paul’s Hospital, Innovation and Achievement award;
- Elizabeth Simpson, senior scientist for Centre for Molecular Medicine and
Therapeutics at the Child and Family Research Institute, Genome BC Award for Scientific Excellence; and
- Hector MacKay-Dunn, senior partner at Farris, Vaughan, Wills & Murphy LLP, Milton Wong Aaward for Leadership.
