Computation in Medicine

 

 

 

Some scenes from the "trenches"...

rudolph.pienaar@childrens.harvard.edu

New approaches to old ideas..

Drivers of medical innovation

From "pharma" to "computation"

From "pharma" to "computation"

Technical design debt

Technical design debt

  • The "kernel" is almost vanishingly small
  • Supporting structure and software systems
    • Always underestimated
    • Critical importance
  • Deployment environment

Promise of computation

Promise of computation

  • Explore complex solution spaces
    • Quickly
    • Efficiently
  • Imaging informatics/analytics
  • Data integration
  • Genomics
  • Molecular folding

The reality of computation

The reality of computation

  • There is no such thing as a free lunch
  • Commodity solutions do not replace domain knowledge
  • Quick and "sexy" is not the same as deep solutions
  • Core understanding of the problem and solution are the real keys

Why do they look so bad?

 

  • Bad design paradigms
  • No competition
    • Closed source
    • Locked to a device
  • Core conservative philosophy

Multiple, deep data sets exist in the healthcare dataverse

Largely disconnected and independent of each other

clinical

billing

health records

Current

  • Unidirectional
  • Isolated
  • Non-integrative
  • Static

 

Current

  • Unidirectional
  • Isolated
  • Non-integrative
  • Static

 

Future

  • Multi-directional
  • Collaborative
  • Integrative
  • Dynamic

How to apply these ideas?

How to apply these ideas?

 



 

Research apps

  • Sampling of some current
  • Sampling of what we do...

What about research apps?

 

  • What do they do?
  • What is the development cycle?
  • What is the deployment cycle?

Sampling of what we do...

Skeletal Survey Report Tool

"Old Way"

"Old Way"

New way

Normative image reference

http://fnndsc.childrens.harvard.edu/library-anon

ChRIS

Thank you!