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Odds are good you’ve seen your doctors using computers a lot more in the past three years. During appointments or while at the hospital, they’ve stopped at a desktop computer or taken a tablet out of their pocket. It’s not because technology lets them provide better care, it’s because federal legislation is changing the way health care providers and insurers use computers.

Juan Montesinos is a doctor who has a passion for mobile and web applications.

Daniel Gil Castillejo is an electronics engineer proficient in the technical aspects of software.

Both moved from Mexico to Rockville in August to pursue their graduate degrees at Johns Hopkins University’s Montgomery County Campus, where they are studying in the Master’s in Biotechnology, Enterprise and Entrepreneurship program.  They both are on full scholarships from the Mexican government and supplementing their coursework with internships at TruBios, a biotechnology services company located on the JHU Montgomery County Campus. TruBios is led by Roberto Trujillo, a native of Mexico who teaches in JHU’s biotechnology program.

The next generation of the nation’s only anthrax vaccine will be made in Lansing, an executive for Emergent BioSolutions Inc. said Tuesday.

There won’t be any new jobs as a direct result of the $29 million federal contract Emergent received earlier this month for production of the new drug, Adam Havey, president of the company’s biodefense division, said. But the new version of the vaccine will help keep current employees working.

The Tech Council of Maryland presents a Lifetime Achievement Award each year to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the success of the community. This year, we are expanding our award categories and will be recognizing three outstanding individuals in the fields of technology, life science, and education. The 2015 honorees will be:

• Norman Augustine, retired chairman and chief executive officer of the Lockheed Martin Corporation
• Wayne Hockmeyer, Ph.D., founder of MedImmune, Inc.
• William Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland

Please mark your calendar to honor these individuals at a celebratory dinner on February 19, 2015 at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center.

GlaxoSmithKline has just launched a $5 million Innovation Challenge Fund to advance open-access technology in the bioelectronics space.

The funding’s aimed toward biz-savvy academics and startups that are working to create a new class of treatments that aren’t necessarily pills or injections, but rather are mini implantable devices. GSK says:”The hope is that these devices could be programmed to read and correct the electrical signals that pass along the nerves of the body, to treat disorders as diverse as inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis, asthma, hypertension and diabetes.”

For the majority of drugs, end-of-lifecycle planning usually involves a reining-in of marketing costs. But Sucampo CEO Peter Greenleaf is doing the exact opposite. In the firm’s second-quarter earnings call, he announced the company is “doubling-down” on Amitiza, the constipation treatment which has been on the market for eight years and which will soon face the threat of generic competition.

Amitiza owns just 1% of the overall constipation market, which includes a number of OTC options, a representative for the drugmaker told MM&M. Sucampo co-markets Amitiza with Takeda.

The University of Central Florida’s Business Incubation Program has pumped nearly $2.5 billion into the economy over the last 15 years.

The program — which turns 15 years old on Oct. 1 — has created 250 early-stage companies, according to a press release sent out Sept. 30. Those companies have added 3,600 total jobs, sales of $1.51 billion and $2.48 billion in regional economic output.

The White House said that President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative is generating interest from companies and philanthropies in a sign of what it calls a wider partnership developing around the U.S. administration’s most prominent science initiative, first unveiled in 2013.

The White House had committed to spending $100 million this year on the project, which seeks to develop new technologies for studying the brain. As part of that, today the U.S. National Institutes of Health announced $46 million in awards to 58 research groups.

Baxter International Inc. (NYSE:BAX) today announced plans to form a new global innovation and research and development (R&D) center in Cambridge, Mass., for Baxter’s biopharmaceuticals business, which is expected to become a separate, independent global company known as Baxalta Incorporated in mid-2015.

The business selected the Cambridge biotech community as the primary location for its global innovation and R&D operations after a global search. The new location will position the company to enhance patient care by advancing and building its robust innovation pipeline, which is centered on core areas of expertise in hematology, immunology, and through technology platforms like gene therapy and biosimilars.