BioMedTexas

Last Tuesday I attended a kickoff  meet-and-greet  for  Health Wildcatters , a new Dallas-based healthcare-oriented seed accelerator . My impression of the event? Electrifying. The venue (" Tech Church ," headquarters for both Health Wildcatters and its older sibling  Tech Wildcatters ) was filled to the brim with people collectively representing an incredibly diverse array of business and technical expertise. For an illustration of the diversity of talent present within Health Wildcatters' orbit, take a look at the profiles of the  mentors  (58 in all) who have signed up to serve as coaches for its incoming startups. I had the fortune of having conversations with a number of them at the event. One was with  Charley Kiser ,  President & CEO of  management consultancy  C. H. Kiser & Company, LLC , who told me that the difficulties that exist in sharing patient information between hospitals is driven only partially by technical constraints (e.g., lack of compatibi

I've been pleasantly surprised to discover since starting this blog that Texas has a much more robust startup scene in LifeSci/MedTech than I had suspected. The Texas Bio Corridor Alliance website,  http://www.texasbiocorridor.org , does a terrific job of consolidating much of the information about it. Its list of in-state incubators/accelerators and venture capital funds is particularly eye-opening. With the most recently posted item in its " Corridor News " section dated June 13, 2012, it appears not to be the most actively maintained website; indeed, it does not mention some of the very latest developments I have come across (more on this in future posts). However, it is so well-organized and generally complete that any future post I write on this topic will most likely serve merely as an addendum to the information contained there. I encourage everyone to take a look at it.   http://www.texasbiocorridor.org This evening I will be attending a networking ev

This post was written as an article for the Postdoc Informer, the UT Southwestern postdoctoral community's bimonthly newsletter. It is featured as the June-July 2013 issue's  lead article.   -IH In light of the Budget Control Act of 2011, a.k.a. "the sequester," the NIH is operating this year at a program level of $29.15 billion, a decrease of $1.71 billion (approximately 5.5%) from 2012. First, the good news. Because of uncertainty surrounding the effects of the sequester in the beginning of the year, non-competing continuation awards made in the early months of 2013 were generally funded at a 10% reduction from the originally committed amount. With the uncertainty now gone, these reductions will be partially restored to more closely reflect the 5.5% reduction of the total NIH budget (e.g., 2013 noncompeting grants at NIGMS will be reduced by 3.5%, and NCI will trim ongoing grants by ~6%). The bad news? While the NIH intends to keep the average size of compe