The Northeast Biomedical High Performance Computing Collaborative

“Biomedical Informatics is at an exciting cross roads: the computational challenges facing researchers, clinicians and public health professionals now exceed the computational power typically available in an academic biomedical setting. This is exciting because it means that the advances in high performance computing from other disciplines (e.g. physics) can be brought to bear on the great challenges of life sciences, health and medical research. The opportunities to develop new therapies, monitor trends in ambulatory hospital data and catch and avert drug related mishaps (e.g. Vioxx) are truly astounding. With the advent of the $1,000 “ome” (genotype, phenotype, labs) – the capacity to analyze and predict longitudinally and in real time as well as the ability to hypothesis test retrospectively will challenge the computational boundaries of all biomedical research organizations. Computational power is now at the very core or our ability to rapidly advance the state of clinical care and healthcare.”
Article
John Halamka, Life as a Healthcare CIO, 8 October 2008

Biomedical images online for exhibition purposes

“There are many ways of finding biomedical images on the web for exhibition use, and some are better the others.”
Article
Thomas, Biomedicine on Display, 7 September 2008

ICT BIO 2008 - Combining the Power of ICT with Biomedical Sciences

“Major diseases like cancer, neurological and cardiovascular diseases are complex in nature involving environmental, life style, ageing and genetic components. One of the future challenges is to integrate the knowledge of all these different components into robust and fully reliable computer models and “in silico” environments that will help the development and testing of new therapies for better prediction and prevention tools in healthcare.”
Article
eHealthNews.eu, 30 June 2008

Ethical Issues of Brain Functional Imaging: Reading your Mind

Abstract:
Neuroimaging practice and research are overviewed in this paper through an ethics lens. The main ethical implications in biomedical research concerning functional brain imaging are discussed with the focus on issues related to imaging of personal information and privacy. Specific norms and guidelines will be eventually formed in the future under the umbrella of the new discipline of Neuroethics.

Irene S. Karanasiou^a, Christos G. Biniaris^b and Andrew J. Marsh^c
a School of Electrical & Computer Eng., National Technical Univ. of Athens, Greece
^b VMW Solutions Ltd., UK
^c University of Westminster, UK

To be published in “Medical and Care Compunetics 5″, IOSPress, 2008.

Harnessing Openness to Transform American Health Care

“One point should be made explicit. Some readers might approach this report thinking it is about healthcare and information technology—and there have been a number of excellent reports on that subject.3 But openness, while facilitated by information technology, should not be equated with it. Th e benefi ts of greater openness can be found when a caregiver is more attentive to a patient’s story and does not stop listening prematurely in order to narrow down potential diagnoses. Greater openness is what allows us to improve the evaluation of interventions in clinical trials through patient-outcomes reporting. When game hunters in Cameroon provide samples to public health researchers on the lookout for disease outbreaks we are witnessing greater openness. Openness is ultimately about an attitude that sees the opportunity for many to benefi t from greater access to information, as well as to contribute much to the benefit of us all.
Greater openness is likely to become increasingly important in more and more areas driven by the relentless progress of information and communications technology. We off er these recommendations with the hope that modest changes based on greater access to information by more people, and more possibilities for them to contribute based on their own expertise and energy, can help improve healthcare in the United States and around the world.”
Report
Digital Connections Council of the Committee for Economic Development, January 2008

A Research Revolution

“Former Intel CEO Andrew S. Grove says the pharmaceutical industry could learn a lot from the computer and chip businesses.”
Article
Sharon Begley, Newsweek, 4 November 2007

Las tecnologías de la información y de la comunicación, claves para potenciar la investigación biomédica y para lograr una gestión más eficiente, según Bernat Soria

ICT, key to empower biomedical research and to obtain more efficient management, says Bernat Soria (Spanish health minister)
“El ministro ha detallado el proceso de implantación del proyecto Sanidad en Línea que incluye la tarjeta sanitaria individual, la receta electrónica y la historia clínica digital. Gobierno y comunidades autónomas prevén que la inversión en esta inicia ascienda a más de 250 millones de euros entre 2006 y 2008″
Article
El médico interactivo, 25 October 2007>

The forefront of a medical revolution

“Someday, researchers say, doctors using sophisticated diagnostic and data analysis tools will be able to precisely identify a disease and tailor treatment to a person’s biological particulars.”
Article
Eric Berger, Houston Chronicle, 11 August 2007