"The Emerging Discipline of Computational Medicine"

Speaker

Raimond Winslow, Ph.D., Professor
Department of Biomedical Engineering
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Director, Institute for Computational Medicine

Dr. Raimond Winslow, Director of the Institute for Computational Medicine (ICM)and the Center for Cardiovascular Bioinformatics & Modeling, visited JHU's Montgomery County Campus to speak at a BIO IT Coalition meeting. Dr. Winslow's presentation covered three topics: 1) the Institute for Computational Medicine's organization and employees; 2) BioMedical eScience Initiatives, including the BioMedical Informatics Research Network; and 3) the Cardiovascular Research Grid (CVRG), a national grid data sharing and computing resource.

During the question and answer period, Dr. Winslow addressed larger issues, including: (i) Corporate involvement in scientific research: "Scientists have to look for direct involvement from companies. In the case of the CVRG, IBM is providing hardware and programmers. GlaxoSmithKline is evaluating whether they would like to invest in the grid as well. Corporate involvement and commercialization cannot be afterthoughts." (ii) Taking science from 'bench to bedside': "The mission of the ICM is to employ computational technologies to change how we treat patients and save lives. It's not just about writing papers. It's about ensuring that our discoveries have an effect on the real world." (iii) How computational medicine will impact the field of medicine: "The impact of computational medicine will not be at the clinician level. It will be in guiding development of novel therapeutics. Computational medicine will start to tell biomedical researchers 'Don't look at those particular therapeutic approaches. Look here instead.' It will help to ensure we don't go down blind alleyways when conducting research. And ultimately, we think it will help reduce the time for drug development."

Dr. Winslow's talk is a prime example of how teamwork and bringing together multiple viewpoints on a common problem is the best approach for developing new technologies," said Jay Doniger, Ph.D., the Chief Science Officer for the BioIT Coalition.

For more about the Institute of Computational Medicine, visit http://www.icm.jhu.edu.