(via IBMLabs)

IBM is enlisting some of the company’s leading scientists and technologists to help medical practitioners and insurance companies provide high-quality, evidence-based care to patients. As part of this initiative, IBM is collaborating with clinicians in numerous medical institutions and hiring medical doctors to work alongside its researchers to develop new technologies, scientific advancements, and business processes for healthcare and insurance providers. 

Dedicating $100 million over the next three years, the initiative will draw on IBM’s leadership in systems integration, services research, cloud computing, analytics and emerging scientific areas — such as nanomedicine and computational biology — to drive innovations that empower practitioners to focus their efforts on patient care

Over the course of 2009, IBM opened
centers in Berlin, Beijing, London, New York, Tokyo and Washington
D.C.  to advance the frontier of analytics:
namely turning big

data into new intelligence, predictive capabilities and insight. Healthcare is one area where analytics holds great promise.

To support those physical solution
centers we launched the Analytics Virtual Center (AVC) at
the start of 2010, and welcome you to visit it, especially as we come up
on the one year anniversary of the launch of our business analytics
initiative.

The AVC underscores a central tenet of Smarter Planet — how digital
and physical worlds — databases and drydocks, 

petabytes and powerplants — are weaving themselves together. Through
it, people can extend their physical presence, voice and ideas to a new
digital dimension that isn’t constrained by geography.

Simply Easy

The AVC is a web-based and voice-enabled collaboration complex that
we built on the web.alive platform, which is
now part of IBM partner Avaya’s portfolio. It features a simple set of
intuitive controls, quick avatar customization and 3D spatial audio.
Many of the hundreds of visitors have  found the environment easier to
use than other virtual worlds. In fact, most people find themselves “in
world” and talking naturally with others within minutes.

While the environment’s navigation and architecture are purposefully
minimalist, the facility supports some sophisticated tools, including a
full-function “web surface” that can display any web content, including
video, animation and Web-based services such as writeboards. Additional
wall surfaces can display presentations, documents, photos and graphics.

In addition to an auditorium and six meeting rooms that can be made
private for confidential discussions, the AVC includes a rooftop
“garden” with six kiosks for different displays, projects or topics. 
We’re also using the rooftop for an “innovator in residence” program
that is open to analytics-related projects or initiatives from academia,
startups,  NGOs and other organizations seeking to innovate around
analytics.

Of course, the AVC is also available for business development and
client meetings. And we expect to also put it work as a vehicle for
recruiting new talent to IBM, especially for people with expertise in
various areas of analytics, simulation, predictive modeling and other
aspects of “big data” innovation in areas including energy, smarter
cities, healthcare and transportation.

To discuss or schedule a tour, meeting, event, the
innovators-in-residence program or how you might like to work with us
via the Analytics Virtual Center, we’ve set up a tool with the new Tungle.me
appointment service.

You can also leave us a
voicemail via Skype.

Enabling Smarter Healthcare.

The following is a guest post from Lonne Jaffe, Director, Public
Sector Solutions, IBM Software

This Smarter Health video describes some of the benefits of
connecting electronic medical record systems with each other and with
other healthcare software systems. Technology like the IBM Health Integration Framework that brings all
these systems together can enable a better patient experience, improve
treatments, lower costs, and allow scientists to confidentially use data
for disease research. That’s health information working together.

As healthcare software becomes more sophisticated, security and privacy remain a priority. IBM helps
protect patient information and helps healthcare organizations comply
with government privacy regulations while achieving the extraordinary
benefits of smarter healthcare.

From HIMSS: Collaboration and data analytics for Smarter Healthcare.

Following is a guest post from IBMer Lonne Jaffe:

At the HIMSS 2010 conference in
Atlanta this week, the topic of improving collaboration in the
healthcare industry will be front and center. At IBM, we believe
software that can enable hospitals, physicians, patients, health
insurance companies and others to share information, work together and
collaborate more effectively is critical to decreasing healthcare costs
and improving the quality of care.

For example, Boston Medical Center and caregivers across the Boston
HealthNet are using collaboration software from IBM and IBM Business
Partner Carefx in a new eReferral system, enabling primary care
physicians to share information with specialists both before the
referral and after the specialist visit. Previously, as is the case in
many health systems, referrals were tracked by generating paper and
faxes, often getting lost in the process. The result? The time to get an
appointment with a specialist has declined from 90 days to less than 10
days in many cases.

Another way to improve collaboration is to get a more comprehensive
view of the patient. IBM
announced today it has finalized the acquisition of Initiate Systems,
a software vendor that has played a key role in improving data
integrity and collaboration across the healthcare industry. The software
can sort through billions of patient records at a time, determining
each unique individual from another with a similar name, so doctors can
get an accurate and complete view of every patient. More than 1,700
healthcare organizations and some 40 health information exchanges (HIEs)
across the world use the technology to uniquely identify patient
records at all points of registration and care across various systems
and different organizations.

This acquisition also brings to IBM technology for collaboration
between physicians and hospitals, facilitating the flow of important
information such as referrals and lab results. It is also another
example of what we consider smarter
healthcare – helping healthcare organizations everywhere capture,
share, analyze and act on information in a connected, coordinated and
systematic way.

SeeClickFix empowers residents to actively care for
and improve their neighborhoods.

Welcome to the SeeClickFix Challenge: Feb 8-21 on the Smarter Cities Scan

Smarter Cities asked if this great new service wanted to use our
platform to share user suggestions and success stories on its
citizen-powered service. So here’s the SCF challenge: over the next two
weeks share your
SeeClickFix story.

How can communities and towns put SCF to new uses. Got a question?
Use the Ask
feature and you shall be answered.  Got something fixed via SCF? Post a story. Fixed something? Do tell.

Already have a Tumblr site? Tag your post “scfchallenge” and we can
reblog your contribution straight into the collaboration.

About SeeClickFix. SCF enables anyone to:

• See – spot a non-emergency issue in your neighborhood
• Click – open a ticket describing the issue and what can be done
  to resolve it
• Fix – publicly report the issue to everyone for resolution

“Lord of the Rings” meets Smarter Healthcare | A Smarter Planet Blog.

in silico modeling creates images of liver
inflammation and cancer that are similar to what might be seen under the
microscope.

At the University of Pittsburgh’s McGowan Institute for
Regenerative Medicine, researchers are using IBM technology to open
up new dimensions in biological modeling. With the help of an IBM Shared
University Research (SUR) Award and an IBM supercomputer, Pitt is using
leading-edge in silico biological research, which uses computer
simulations to explore biological pathways and test therapeutic
interventions, tissue engineering, cell therapies and artificial organs
and biodevices. The results of such research could significantly reduce
the cost of new drug development and shorten the treatment evaluation
process – getting treatments to the market faster and cheaper. These
modeling techniques are similar to those used to generate the fantasy
creatures of other worlds in movies, such as “Lord of the Rings” and the
“Star Trek” series. So instead of creating an imaginary character to
fill out a battle scene, Pitt scientists are applying computational
techniques to simulate, for example, inflamed liver cells morphing into
cancer. That allows them to see not only how tumors develop, but how
drugs or other interventions could affect disease progression.

For example, the Pitt research team has simulated liver tissue to
study how a chronic hepatitis infection can lead to liver cancer, lung
tissues to study viral infection and chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease and skin to study how patients with spinal cord injuries develop
pressure ulcers. This type of advanced modeling can help researchers
better understand basic biological processes and allows them to screen
drugs and determine their impact on the body to uncover the best
interventions for a broad range of diseases.

For more info, read an interview with Dr. Yoram Vodovotz in the  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Photo credit:  University of Pittsburgh Center for Inflammation
and Regenerative Modeling

Technorati Tags: biological research, health care, healthcare, McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine,
supercomputer,
University of Pittsburghy, UPMC

A Smarter Planet.

AsthmaMD iPhone App Helps Asthma Sufferers, Gathers Aggregate Research Data

Each day 11 people die of asthma in the U.S., and it accounts for one-quarter of all emergency room visits. Since 1980 the asthma death rate overall has increased by 50%. A new iPhone app called AsthmaMD, which was created by am Pejham (a doctor and researcher) and Salim Madjd, aims to help some of those sufferers. The application let’s them keep a diary of attacks, helping them keep records of the severity of attacks, medications used, etc.

A Smarter Planet.

infoneernet:

New Device Prints Human Tissue

Invetech has delivered what it calls the “world’s first production model 3D bio-printer” to Organovo, developers of the proprietary NovoGen bioprinting technology. Organovo will in turn supply the devices to institutions investigating human tissue repair and organ replacement.

Keith Murphy, CEO of Organovo, based in San Diego, said the units represent a breakthrough because they provide for the first time a flexible technology platform for organizations working on many different types of tissue construction and organ replacement.

“Scientists and engineers can use the 3D bio printers to enable placing cells of almost any type into a desired pattern in 3D,” said Murphy. “Researchers can place liver cells on a preformed scaffold, support kidney cells with a co-printed scaffold, or form adjacent layers of epithelial and stromal soft tissue that grow into a mature tooth. Ultimately the idea would be for surgeons to have tissue on demand for various uses, and the best way to do that is get a number of bio-printers into the hands of researchers and give them the ability to make three dimensional tissues on demand.”

» via Live Science

A Smarter Planet.

IBM tips microfluidic device for immunodiagnostics – Small Times

Scientists from IBM Research in Zurich, Switzerland, have created a diagnostic test using a silicon chip to more quickly diagnose diseases. Their collaborative work with the U. Hospital of Base, published in the December issue of Lab on a Chip, uses capillary forces — the process whereby liquid rises in narrow tubes, or drawn into tiny openings — to analyze tiny samples of serum or blood to find disease markers, t

A Smarter Planet.

A Smarter healthcare system: Sam Palmisano’s speech at the 2009 Medical Innovation Summit, Cleveland Clinic

Remarks (as prepared) by Samuel J. Palmisano, IBM Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

A Smarter Planet.

emergentfutures:

Cough into your mobile phone for instant diagnosis

Your mobile phone may soon be able to diagnose respiratory illnesses
in seconds when you cough into it.

A Smarter Planet.

IBM Opens Advanced Analytics Center in Washington, D.C.

IBM announced the opening of the sixth in a network of analytics
solution centers – this one dedicated to helping federal agencies and
other public sector organizations extract actionable insights from
their data.

The new IBM Analytics Solution Center in Washington, D.C., will draw
on the expertise of more than 400 IBM professionals. These will include
IBM researchers, experts in advanced software platforms, and
consultants with deep industry knowledge in areas such as
transportation, social services, public safety, customs and border
management, revenue management, defense, logistics, healthcare and
education