According to a publication from World Pharma Today, the 16th annual BioAsia conference saw the greatest ever amount of participation at what is consistently Asia’s largest biotechnology and life science forum. Over 400 delegates from 26 countries jammed into the Tokyo Grand Hyatt in the middle of a work week to discuss a number of important issues in various fields of medical research. Panels were hosted by some of the most promising researchers in the world, and a lucky few were specially recognized for their contributions.

Start-Up Stage

In this event, an “eminent” jury recognize the achievements and contributions of 76 biotech start-ups that were deemed to be the most innovative. Five of those companies received special honors and a 40,000 JPY prize. The winners were Ekistics Solutions (for the design of Aura, a new technology that could help people with aortic valve damage), Azooka Life Sciences (for advances in DNA testing and processing), Caredose (a medicine-by-mail service that helps track and deliver your medications as needed), Dozee (a phone-connected sleep monitoring app), and Spectral Insights (for a microscopy imaging package).

Data, Technology, and Life Sciences

The final day of the conference seemed to be the most strongly themed. It featured a panel discussion on the use of life sciences and big data to improve the well-being of patients, and a discussion contrasting the medical industry’s relationship with technology to the tech industry’s approach to medicine.

The administrators of Telangana state (in southern India) and Taizhou Medical High-Tech Industry Development Zone (near Nanjing, China) also used the last day to proclaim a two a two-year research agreement to cooperate and assist one another in life science and biotechnology research.

The overlap between medicine and technology is becoming increasingly blurred, as the panel discussions and start-up innovators from this year’s conference show. High-tech treatments that are almost commonplace today were the stuff of science fiction just a few decades ago. Things like small molecule drugs or gene therapy were once just radical ideas being proposed to a skeptical audience. We owe it in part to conventions of experts like BioAsia for establishing medicine forward as a driving catalyst for technological research.

Do you think it’s important to have in-person discussions about medical science? Do you think the same thing could be accomplished by a medical journal? Patient Worthy wants you to tell us why!