NSF Award
1006086
1006086 <br/>Bonato<br/><br/>This project supports the FIRST AMA-IEEE EMBS MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE ON PERSONALIZED MEDICINE http://www.ama-ieee.embs.org/. This is the first time that a major medical association (i.e. the American Medical Association http://www.ama-assn.org/) and a major engineering society (i.e. the IEEE Engineering and Biology Society http://www.embs.org/) come together to organize a conference on Personalized Medicine. Personalized Medicine starts with customized patient profiles and results in personalized treatment plans. Personalized Medicine benefits patients and engages clinicians, challenges engineers and demands that innovators develop low-cost, effective, and ubiquitous technologies. The conference targets participation by clinicians, engineers and innovators, industrial leaders, government agencies and policy makers. <br/><br/>The program will be organized around four major topics: Biomarkers and Personalized Genetic Profiling, Connected Health, Electronic Medical Records and Personal Health Records, and Point-of-Care Technology. These are topics that have witnessed incredible advances over the past decade. Recent developments in Biomarkers and Personalized Genetic Profiling have opened up tremendous possibilities in the prevention and cure of diseases. The need for managing chronic clinical conditions in the home settings has generated a great deal of interest for technology that allows one to pursue Connected Health solutions. Great advances are also occurring in the management of clinical information via the use of Electronic Medical Records (which are the center piece of the ongoing health care reform) and Personal Health Records (which many believe will soon complement information gathered in the clinical environment with more traditional tools). Finally, advances in Point-of-Care Technology have provided ways to diagnose and intervene anytime and anywhere, from the PCP office to the emergency room, from the home setting to the field. <br/><br/>Intellectual Merit: The conference will provide a unique opportunity to achieve genuine interdisciplinary work involving clinicians and engineers. The format of the conference will facilitate the exchange of information between individuals with clinical and individuals with technical expertise. Clinicians will be provided up-to-date information about technology relevant to implement Personalized Medicine strategies. Engineers will be given the opportunity to find out what are the major roadblocks toward the adoption of Personalized Medicine that could be addressed by developing new technologies. <br/><br/>Broader Impact: The PIs will provide the public at large with access to the conference material by implementing multiple strategies. First of all, the organizers are in the process of setting up a blog on the conference website. The blog will provide individuals interested in the conference with the opportunity to shape the conference by posting questions, by proposing discussion topics, and by providing information about their own work. Secondly, all the conference abstracts will be made available to the public at large via an open access initiative that we will implement on the conference website. In other words, abstracts will be posted on the conference website. Finally, the organizers will select contributions among those presented at the conference for the first issue of a new magazine that AMA and IEEE EMBS intend to launch within a year from completion of the conference.
