BioCrats Connect promoted by Persistent Systems was lunched for the first time in Pune recently to build a community of life sciences professionals. The event is specifically designed for all the people from the life sciences, technology, bio sciences and every science related sectors to meet up quarterly to discuss science of relevance, latest trends and activities in the industry. The convention also aims to ensue that good scientific projects are born out of this initiative having relevance to Indian health care sector.

According to Abhay Jere, associate vice president, Persistent Systems, this half day convention is an initiative to bring in everyone and anyone related to science under the same roof to not only to discuss but also to ensure that whatever is being discussed is being implemented in the long run. “We want to facilitate to the interdisciplinary cross talks and ensure that some concrete ideas comes out of it and those will be implemented for sure,” he added.

This is the first event organised by Persistent for the life sciences and health care practice from which about 15 per cent of Persistent business is generated. The company's main focus is on bioinformatics and cheminformatics; clinical and health informatics, caBIG, instrumentation and medical devices and lab automation, LIMS and sample tracking. The BioCrats convention is aimed at bringing the like minded people from this field together and has brainstorming sessions that can result in some concrete ideas for future.

The event saw the presence of some eminent speakers from the industry who gave interesting presentations from their field. The first BioCrats convention was inaugurated by Bobby Schnabel, dean, School of Informatics. Indiana University and was presided over by Dr C S Yajnik, diabetologist, KEM Hospital Pune.

Dr Yajnik pointed out that maternal health and rapid transition of health have a major role to play as a leading cause of diabetes. Dr Yajnik informed, “Research being conducted across the world are showing new set of outcomes on diabetes. Earlier it was only three to four organs that were implicated for this deadly disease but now latest research had proved that eight organs can be implicated for the cause of diabetes.”

The first presentation of the convention was given by Dr Ramaswamy, scientist NCBS, Bangalore and CEO, C-camp on the global carbon cycle—green chemistry, biocatalysis and bioremediation. His talk was followed by Dr Thangraj, scientist CCMB, Hyderabad. He gave a presentation on making evolutionary biology a basic science for medicine.

“In biology it is not the number of parts that matters but it is the nature or behaviour of the parts that matter,” said Dr Pawan Dhar, director, centre for systems and synthetic biology, University of Kerala. He gave a very informative presentation on synthetic biology and its importance as an emerging science.

The event was attended by a good number of people from the industry, students community and people from the scientific field and ended with the positive approach to meet up again in the next quarter.