Management Perspectives Abstracts

The Increasing Influence of Personalized Medicine on Life Sciences Research
Alan Louie, Ph.D., Research Director, Health Industry Insights

Life sciences research has traditionally followed an ordered and isolated process in the move towards advancing new treatments or therapies into clinical development (and eventually towards a commercial therapeutic product). However, given the ever growing quantities and availability of new relevant data as well as ongoing data integration initiatives within organizations, researchers must now be mindful of how their efforts could be affected by human biology, including patient-specific knowledge that can lead to personalized medicine solutions. Specifically, in those cases where human variation directly impacts drug efficacy or adverse events, early data and insights from potential biomarker variations in humans, in silico disease modeling, and new technology process innovations can strongly impact success of researcher efforts, despite their origins from other parts of the life sciences value chain. This presentation will discuss the impact of personalized medicine on the conduct of life sciences research and its increasing influence on changing current research practices.

Enabling Advanced Genomic Research through Information Technology
Phil Butcher, Head of IT, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, Cambridge, UK

This presentation will discuss how bioinformatics and information technology has been implemented at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute to enable advanced genomic research.  Topics to be discussed will include Lg Scale dataq acquisition, new Seq technologies, standards, downstream issues, and the move of information technology towards open source and commoditization.

Healthcare IT to Improve Care Delivery: A Case Study From Geneva University Hospitals
Antoine Geissbuhler, MD, Professor and Chairman, Medical Informatics Division, Geneva University Hospitals

In order for healthcare IT to improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of care delivery, several challenges are to be met. The architectural design of information systems must enable agility in rapidly reconfiguring environments. Appropriate knowledge-engineering mechanisms and innovative organizational solutions must support the ability of the institution to learn. Care providers and decision makers must be empowered to use the information system as the key tool for the improvement of care delivery. For the last 30 years, Geneva University Hospitals have been pioneering the development and use of patient-centered healthcare information systems. Current concepts, designs, implementations, and challenges will be presented.

EHRs as a Foundation for Promoting Patient-Centric Healthcare Delivery: The Capital Health Case Study
Donna Strating, CIO and Vice President, Information Systems and Equipment, Capital Health,
Edmonton, Canada

This presentation discusses how Capital Health in Canada leveraged the information foundation created by their electronic health records (EHRs) to improve the quality of patient care throughout this integrated health region. The patient-centered information in netCARE (Capital Health's regional EHR) formed the IT foundation that allowed Capital Health to advance their healthcare agenda into new areas, including population centered chronic disease management, partnering for the integration of clinical and biomedical data to evaluate and advance outcomes, and patient self management. This presentation will discuss the case study of netCARE, the importance of registries, the work that Capital Health has done in chronic disease management, the challenges of building information sets that can be effectively leveraged to achieve these goals, and the future opportunities for improvement in patient care.

Improving Quality and Managing Cost in Health Systems and Physician Offices
Tina Brown-Stevenson, President, Aetna Integrated Informatics

Ms. Brown-Stevenson will discuss the efforts Aetna has made to effect significant change at the most difficult intersection—during the process of care delivery. She will present a case study of one U.S. Health System which, through data, process change and significant effort involving Aetna, physicians and employers, "right sized" processes resulting in efficient, high-quality care as well as higher patient satisfaction. Additionally, she will describe efforts to expand this work across more Systems of Care, and to bring evidence-based clinical solutions to the point of care using technology developed by Aetna.

China’s Disease Surveillance System: Connecting Technological Innovation and Global Health Needs
Michael P. Birt, PhD, Director, Center for Health and Aging, The National Bureau of Asian Research, Seattle

Robust disease surveillance systems are critical in an era when a pandemic could quickly sweep the globe. Since 2004, China has been a leader in disease surveillance. Recognizing the advantages of its central leadership and cutting-edge technology capabilities, and the core needs of its large population, the Chinese CDC has created a state-of-the-art surveillance system. This system has been demonstrated and reported, but has not yet received the widespread attention it deserves. We will analyze how China responded to the SARS crisis with significant technological innovation in the area of disease surveillance. Finally, we will hypothesize on how such a communicable disease system might also be expanded to create a long-term population-based epidemiological database for non-communicable diseases, both in China and elsewhere.