This Week’s Biotech Highlights

The Obama administration’s efforts to foster openness and public engagement took a giant leap forward this week with the announcement of data.gov, making data from across the U.S. government readily available from a single portal. This will be an incredible tool for those interested in measuring how governments actually perform and should be a standard part of every government’s web offering… *cough*Canada*cough*

Though Canada hasn’t followed suit yet, we did get more data this week about Canada’s Clean Energy Fund, and about two new BIP investments by the Ontario government. 

We also saw interesting new data in Scientific American’s Global Biotechnology Ranking. Canada ranked in the top 10 for IP protection and intensity of biotechnology activity proportionate to population, but didn’t quite make the top 10 overall.

I spent the week gathering data (and business cards) at BIO’s 2009 conference in Atlanta where I blogged about the Technology Transfer Breakfast and the Ontario Premier’s Breakfast. I also semi-live blogged the Wednesday Keynote Panel on Health Reform, which featured Karl Rove, Tom Daschle, Bill Frist and Howard Dean.

All of that new data pointed to a great week for the Cross-Border Biotech Blog with plenty of new readers and plenty of new stories for our Trends in 2009 series.