U.S.-Israel Science and Technology Foundation Convenes Interdisciplinary International Science Workshop
USISTF-organized Workshop Brings Together Medical and Computer Scientists from USA, Europe, Israel, and Middle East to Advance Knowledge Mining and Bioinformatics Tools for Personalized Diagnostics and Therapeutics
The world has seen the human genome fully decoded by an international team of scientists after more than a decade of work to being available to scientists within days or hours. The question now is how will we use the wealth of information available to us through our newly understood genomic data and, further, given our massive computing power, can we merge this information with all of a given patient’s health data, compared against that of similar cases, in order to better diagnose and offer therapeutics?
The U.S-Israel Science and Technology Foundation, in partnership with the Florida International University, the University of Maryland Baltimore County and the Technion, convened an international science workshop that brought together an international group of medical and computer scientists focused on just that, how to use knowledge mining and bioinformatics tools to advance personalized diagnostics and therapeutics. Sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the workshop was held on February 4th and 5th in Florence, Italy, adjunct to the International Congress on Personalized Medicine. The workshop’s scientific steering committee includes Dr. Naphtali Rishe (Workshop Chair and NSF Principal Investigator), Dr. Yelena Yesha (Program Chair) and Dr. Eddy Karnieli (UPCP General Chair). Ann Liebschutz was the Organizational Chair.
The workshop brought together a group of 40 medical and computer scientists representing the United States, Israel, Palestinian Territories, Canada, Italy, Turkey, the Netherlands and Germany. The workshop included four scientific sessions focusing on the policy implications of implementing personalized diagnostics and therapeutics based on big data analytics, the technological challenges facing computer scientists and physicians in creating useable systems, the challenges in utilizing big data analytics to predict future health outcomes, and the needs of clinicians in utilizing in their practices decision support systems based on big data analytics.
Moderated by Dr. Ron Ribitzky, the workshop reached a multi-disciplinary and multi-national broad-based consensus on new directions for knowledge mining and bioinformatics tools to impact patient care; as well as strategic, proactive, and preventive health and wellness decisions here and now.
A multi-faceted, grand-challenge undertaking, the highlights included a call-to-action for technological breakthroughs to fill the growing ‘translational white spaces’ among the many scientific and clinical disciplines throughout the personalized medicine cycle up to end-user clinicians, patients, and consumers; business models innovation to accelerate the reduction of new discoveries along that cycle to practice; and policies that facilitate both.
Uzia Galil, the founder of the Galil Center for Medical Informatics, Telemedicine and Personalized Medicine at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, had this to say about the workshop which he participated in, “ we have today a better cooperation between the Bio-Medical and Genetic Research and the advanced electronic Medical Health records, but we need more workshops of this kind in order to bring again computer scientists and clinicians to come together and lay the groundwork for the future of medicine by providing the relevant information to the general practitioner in front of the patient."
Ann Liebschutz, Executive Director of the USISTF said, “this workshop embodies the mission of USISTF programs- we convene top scientists and industry leaders to chart a path forward to move today's emerging technologies to become tomorrow's deployable solutions.”
The group is preparing to deliver the scientific proceedings of the workshop to the National Science Foundation and broader community. These proceedings are expected to be published as Springer Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science.
The U.S.-Israel Science & Technology Foundation (USISTF) is a Washington, DC based 501c3 non-profit organization founded by a joint initiative of the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Israel Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor with a mission of strengthening the scientific and R&D relationship of the U.S. and Israel to promote economic growth through innovation. USISTF achieves its mission by convening U.S.-Israel scientific and industry conferences, producing strategy and policy data and publications and facilitating R&D framework programs that enable joint research activities.
For more information, please contact Eve Copeland, Program Manager, U.S.-Israel Science and Technology Foundation