CIMIT blog

Farewell, Don Baim

10 NOVEMBER 2009 - BOSTON  It is with a heavy heart that CIMIT says goodbye to our friend and colleague Dr. Don Baim. Don passed away last Friday, 6 November 2009, following complications of surgery to treat adrenal cancer.

We will remember Don as a former CIMIT Site Miner (one of many roles here) and as someone who continually pushed medicine forward -- be it from Harvard Medical to Boston Scientific. He was a Forum speaker, a panelist multiple times and from time to time we found him in the audience of Forums focused on Venture Capitalism in Medicine. 

This morning John Parrish called a moment of silence for Don here at CIMIT and we remembered how much he gave to medicine and the better outcomes he helped produce.

Don was a friend to all of us here and his loss is a tremendous one.

CIMIT

CIMIT blog is a publication of the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology

Innovation Congress 2009 Keynotes!

Last week headed off to the CIMIT Innovation Congress 2009 in Boston. There we found ourselves at the intersection of academic medicine, government and industry with clinicians and researchers doing groundbreaking work. The conference was a tremendous success with the Focus Session breakouts, the Exploratorium, and the Keynotes. Embedded below you'll find a few great keynotes and links to all the rest.

For full versions of the CIC09 Keynotes, including additional speakers please click here

Clay Christensen Harvard Business School - Talks about Disruptive Innovation and healthcare reform

Maj. General James K. Gilman Commander of Medical Research and Materials Command at Fort Detrick - Tells us how we take care of today's Wounded Warriors

Susan Axelrod President and Founder, CURE - Tells the story of her daughters struggle with Epilepsy

CIMIT blog is a publication of the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT)

Social Networking Scientists and Researchers

Social Networking and Knowledge Sharing for Scientists and Researchers  

Moderator: Rajiv Gupta, MD, PHD, Director, VCT Lab and Assistant Radiologist, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital

Sharing Knowledge: Institutional and Technological Facilitators and Inhibitors  
David Lazer, PhD, Associate Professor of Political Science and Computer Science, Northeastern University & Director, Program on Networked Governance, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University
 
 
What are the factors that affect how people search for information, and in turn, whether others provide information?  This presentation will examine three case studies of information sharing:  regarding the use of DNA in the criminal justice system, regarding the use of the Internet by members of Congress, and among State Health Officials, focusing on the questions of what facilitates and inhibits knowledge sharing. 

 
 

ResearchGATE: A First step towards Science 2.0 
Ijad Madisch, MD, PhD, ResearchGATE CEO and Co-Founder and Researcher in the Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University

ResearchGATE is a no-charge, online research platform focused on the sciences, but open to all disciplines. Improving collaboration among scientists is the top goal and ResearchGATE offers many tools to encourage this. First, with its social networking platform, researchers create profiles, form groups, upload papers and network with each other.  Within the groups, members can use a smart file and data sharing tool to co-edit documents. For institutions or associations, the platform offer Subcommunities. These are essentially smaller, (password-)protected versions of the ResearchGATE platform that are open only to members of the respective institution. ResearchGATE also assists individual researchers in managing their literature resources. The platform provides extensive search capacities - including a semantic search engine into which entire abstracts can be pasted – that help users locate papers both within the internal resources and in all major external databases, including PubMed and CiteSeer. ResearchGATE’s new Job Board helps keep members working in the physical world; employment-seekers can find extensive academic postings here. The team's commitment to serious research is reflected by its scientific advisory network of more than 140 leading scientists. Currently, over 150,000 registered scientists from more than 200 countries form the network.

CIMIT blog is a publication of the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT)

Changing Relationships between Academia and Industry in a Transforming Economic Climate

Changing Relationships between Academia and Industry in a Transforming Economic Climate

Moderator: Mark Chalek, Chief Business Ventures, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Panelists/Speakers: 

Peter Barrett, Partner, Atlas Venture

Alvaro Pascual-Leone, MD, PHD, Professor in Neurology, Director, Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation and Harvard-Thorndike Clinical Research Center, Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Stan Lapidus, Chairman, Helicos Biosciences Corp.

Jeffrey M. Arnold, Founder and President, Arnold Strategies, LLC

There is no doubt that the current economic downturn has wreaked havoc in medical device investment. Smaller device companies are cash strapped, and have little hope to enter the public market. Venture investors are reluctant to invest as a result; new regulatory and medical reimbursement issues continue to add complexity into the mix. The pace of discovery of innovative medical solutions made in academia remains unchanged, however.  Is this a matter of waiting out the storm, or is there a need for a new model of academic/industrial relations?

This CIMIT Forum will showcase the perspectives of diverse stakeholders in the device space: the VC, the small company CEO, the life sciences entrepreneur, and the academician. Some of the issues to be explored will include: nature of collaborations between academia and industry; the maturity level of academic innovations needed to attract industry attention; and new/creative ways of structuring alliances/deals.

CIMIT Blog is a publication of the Center for Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT)

Headed to Boston for Medical Innovation in Late October

October 27th & 28th - The CIMIT Innovation Congress in Boston

22 October 2009 BOSTON - Just a few days from now I'll be spending the day (October 27th &28) at the CIMIT Innovation Congress. The Congress gives new insights into the future of medicine and provides a forum where we can interact with clinical and engineering innovators who are developing breakthrough technologies to advance healthcare delivery in hospitals, at home and on the battlefield.

All over the country academic medical centers, the government and private industry are collaborating with each other to explore novel approaches to healthcare delivery and they are converging on the Innovation Congress in Boston to share their work.

The general sessions this year seem well rounded and cover the current sphere of healthcare debate. Dr. John Halamka, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center will be challenging leaders from Microsoft, Google and Dossia to explore solutions that leverage the power of information, software and community to engage patients in their own healthcare.

Keynote speakers will be: Susan Axelrod, President CURE, Mike Harsh, CTO GE Healthcare, Major General James K. Gilman, DoD, Sean Hogan, VP Healthcare Delivery Systems, IBM Healthcare, Clay Christensen, Harvard Business School

The conference will be covering some ambitious themes: Care Anywhere, Wounded Warrior, Breakthrough Technologies and Innovation 101. Of special interest will be the national leaders describing some of the challenges behind Caring for Wounded Warriors and returning veterans, as well as some demonstrations of improved diagnostic tools for PTSD/TBI.

Within the conference is the Exploratorium, which will feature over 50 demonstrations in 4 pavilions: Care Anywhere, Wounded Warrior, Breakthrough Technologies and Innovation 101. I'm especailly looking forward to point of care diagnostics and a point of care HIV patient monitoring device that uses a microfluidic chip to deliver results in one minute.

For more information, please visit the Innovation Congress site.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Best,

Peter Keating, MD

CIMIT Blog is a publication of the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT)

Flexible Design Environments Accelerate Delivery of Care Anywhere

Massachusetts General Hospital - Boston, MA

Flexible Design Environments are needed to Accelerate the Delivery of ‘Care Anywhere’ 

BOSTON 21 October 2009 - The time is right to create a primary care system that really works for everyone.  In the near future, all patients will have convenient access to the information, education and care that they need to manage their health effectively, all the time.  Health care providers will be able to care for patients in the right place at the right time, even when the right place is in the home or community.  Realizing this dream requires challenging many of the traditions and assumptions that have driven the delivery of care and have informed the design of our current care delivery environments.  Innovation is difficult in those environments. 

There is a way to move forward.  Health care organizations that are prepared to innovate in primary care must create flexible design environments that will support and accelerate innovation.  These environments must be live clinical practices that innovate at the point of care.  The critical components that will enable these new environments to succeed will be: 

1. A commitment to collaboration with patients.  The patient is potentially the most potent innovator in the game, and when we include them in this work we’ll get it right.  A successful care environment will welcome the patient as the expert in their personal health care journey and recognize that the patient must have input to new approaches to care and to the new processes and technologies that we will create.

2. Flexible, robust care teams.  A care team must have the skills, time, flexibility and resources to work with patients to try new approaches to care.  The team will be able to interact with patients in non-traditional ways, breaking away from the current office visit paradigm to a care model without walls.

3. Dedicated Space.  The physical environments that support new care models will be different than existing primary care facilities.  It is crucial for care teams and patients to get out of their current environment and for health care organizations to clear space for new physical facility designs to emerge. 

4. IT and Telecomm tools.  Information technology and communication technology that connects the patient easily to their care team and enables proactive conversations, sharing of records and educational information and remote monitoring.  The technology to accomplish this exists now and will be adopted more readily in the right environment.

5. Experts in systems, technology and process design.  Experts will be present in a flexible design environment to work with the patients and care team to provide or design tools that support this new care delivery system.  Organizations like CIMIT currently have this expertise and are ready to participate.

6. Financial support.   New medical practice environments will escape the broken fee-for-service payment system that stifles innovation and prevents primary care from realizing its full potential to elevate the health of a population at a lower cost. As new care models emerge and are proven effective, payment schemes will begin to support them.  It is unlikely that effective payment schemes will appear without innovative care models leading the way.

There are real challenges that must be met for organizations to create these environments.  Those challenges can and must be overcome for our primary care delivery system to innovate and evolve. Health care organizations that commit to the development of flexible design environments as a strategy to creating a better delivery system will enable their care providers and patients to lead the way into the future. 

David Judge

Co-Program Leader, Clinical Systems Innovation

David will be a participant in this years Innovation Congress October 27th & 28th 2009 in Boston. For more information on attending please visit the Congress site

CIMIT Blog is a publication of the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology

Webcasting and Medical Education

Webcasting and Medical Education

BOSTON 20 October 2009 - Over the past three years, the Harvard Trauma and Critical Care Symposium has successfully brought together health care providers from around the North East and the country to review state-of-the-art information about the diagnosis and management of severely ill patients.

This year, Symposium director Dr. George Velmahos is expanding the scope of the course using webcasting to connect health care providers around the world. Whether logging in from a neighboring state or a faraway country, the lectures, expert panels, and interactive sessions delivered by a prestigious faculty will be made available online to those who share an interest in trauma and critical care.

Rising travel costs pose a significant barrier to accessing medical education and many physicians are finding increasingly difficult to take time off to attend conferences. The webcast offers relevant education for physicians and nurses working in advanced settings as well as those practicing in under served areas.  

To facilitate a more interactive experience, the online course will provide participants with opportunities to ask questions online and respond to multiple-choice tests to earn CME credits. An archived version of the webcast will also be available for those logging in from different time zones. Finally, an audio-only option and downloadable PowerPoint presentations for each session will be available for those who lack high-bandwidth Internet connections.

For more information about the 2009 Trauma and Critical Care Symposium webcast (November 9th-10th) check out the video below and visit the webcast homepage

Susan Axelrod and her Experience with Epilepsy on 60 Minutes

Watch CBS News Videos Online

A clinical focus group on epilepsy will convene on October 27th &28th in Boston

BOSTON, 19 October 2009 - Millions of Americans and their families live every day with the immense challenges of epilepsy. Seizures that strike unpredictably at any moment and cause injury or even death; treatment side effects that continually impair thinking, emotions and coordination; related medical and psychological conditions; limitations in learning, driving and employment; and social stigma are just a few of these many challenges.

We need new treatments. We need new diagnostic tests to be able to choose the best treatments. We need new approaches to thinking about treatments. And we need people living with epilepsy to keep us focused
and on track.

That's why physicians, engineers and others are convening at the upcoming CIMIT Innovation Congress to hear from people directly impacted by epilepsy.

In her keynote address, Susan Axelrod will talk about her personal experience with epilepsy, and the important roles that patients and families have in defining the unmet needs, participating in clinical trials and supporting groundbreaking research. Susan poignantly describes her family's struggle with epilepsy during her October 25 interview with Katie Couric on 60 Minutes.

In addition, a panel discussion will explore ways to accelerate the movement of new technologies from academic laboratories to patient care.  I know how difficult it can be to introduce new technologies for epilepsy therapy, yet the same challenge holds true for all diseases -- cancer, heart disease, and more.  Patient advocates are critical voices in these endeavors.

We can all make a difference! Can you help? 

Dr. Steven Schachter

Chief Academic Officer, CIMIT

CIMIT blog is a publication of the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology

Red Sox & MGH Home Base Program: PTSD/TBI Help on the Way

BOSTON 23 September 2009 - Last Thursday, CIMIT had the great honor of attending the Red Sox & MGH Home Base Program launch. If you haven't already heard, the aim of Home Base is to provide care for soldiers and families suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) using the fan power of the Red Sox, the patient care of MGH, and the tremendous support of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

There are many crucial parts to success in this meaningful new project (Clinical care, Family support, Education, Outreach and Research) and CIMIT will be the lead research institution in the program. Dr. Roger Pitman will head PTSD and Dr. Ros Zafonte will head TBI. For more information and to get involved visit www.homebaseprogram.org

Speeches of the evening came with enormous impact. Speakers: Dr. Peter Slavin, Tom Werner, Secretary Shinseki, Dr. John Parrish, ABC reporter Bob Woodruff, Chief Bryan Zimmerman and other veterans.

It was a night for the soldiers that culminated with a trip to Fenway to toss the first pitch. Chief threw a little wide, but can't say any of us could do better with the emotion that night.

Check out the speeches and the on field ceremony below. And get involved: www.homebaseprogram.org

Dr. Peter Slavin opens and welcomes the Veterans

Tom Werner details the new program and Red Sox involvement

Secretary Shinseki tells us about the importance of soldier care after combat

Dr. John Parrish, the Director of Home Base, tells us we need to act now

Bob Woodruff of ABC tells the story of his TBI in Iraq

Chief Zimmerman and other Veterans tell their stories

Dr Peter Slavin and Tom Werner are back to close the launch and take us to Fenway

On field ceremony at Fenway and Chief's first pitch

CIMIT blog is a publication of the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT)

Intellectual Property & Medical Innovations Podcast

BOSTON - On Tuesday 29 September 2009 the weekly CIMIT Forum will be focused on Global Health, Intellectual Property, and Access to Medical Innovations

One of the participants is Kevin Outterson from Boston University Law School. Lynn and Kevin spoke by phone yesterday and he told the story of how a change in the definition of Intellectual Property with regard to U.S. Trade Agreements has resulted in the seizure of generic AIDS medications headed for Africa.

We hope you enjoy this edition of our Forum Podcast (Running Time: 5 min) To attend our free weekly Forum please click here for directions

Global Health, Intellectual Property, and Access to Medical Innovations

MODERATOR:
UTKAN DEMIRCI
Harvard Medical School and BWHBrigham & Women's Hospital

PANELISTS:

MARYANNE FENERJIAN
Harvard Office of Technology Transfer

KEVIN OUTTERSON
Boston University Law School

F.M. SCHERER
Harvard Kennedy School of Government

JONATHAN SPECTOR
MGH, Harvard School of Public Health and Medecins Sans Frontieres

CIMIT blog is a publication of the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT)