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This is a brief video of the opening comments of a lecture given by the Texas Medical Association. We don’t get to hear the entire presentation, but the opening comments somewhat make the case for involvement and talks a bit about how it is the future for MDs too. BD
He describes how he felt and about how he caught it from friends who had recently returned from Mexico, so it is airborne in the UK. He had no 
idea he had the flu, just went to the doctor with not feeling well with a sore throat and fever. He was surprised to get the call from the Health Department alerting him to the news that he had the Swine Flu. BD
An NHS clerical worker has become the first person in the UK to contract swine flu without having visited Mexico, tests have confirmed.
Graeme Pacitti, 24, of Falkirk, picked up the virus after contact with the UK's first cases Iain and Dawn Askham, the Scottish government said.
Meanwhile, the Health Protection Agency has confirmed two more cases in Merseyside and Gloucestershire.
A total of 642 possible cases are being investigated in the UK.
The Health Protection Agency said the latest confirmed UK cases were a woman from the Merseyside who recently returned from Mexico, and a person in south west England.
BBC NEWS | UK | Tests confirm flu transfer in UK
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Microsoft working with WHO to help out with free data assistance. The websites are getting over loaded with individuals looking for information relative to the flu pandemic. It is called the Microsoft Emergency Operation Center, help for governments and non profit agencies. Interesting that the video states that “few” people know they are there. In addition to internet services, they also deploy people on site to get everything back together. The websites that need addition space can use Microsoft Servers to host their websites as well to enable more traffic to get through for the information they need. Watch the local news video for more information.
The systems operate in over 160 countries. BD
The service is free.
Just recently in the news there was also a situation in Chicago that questioned a Cerner installation. With so much going on at present, it’s really
hard to comment one way or another as software vendors definitely have their hands full today. This could be more of an issue with the contractor too. Check out the related reading below and you can see a multitude of projects Cerner is currently involved with, including adding genomics to the medical records too, a big project to say the least. It appears this is a question of whether or not the system from Cerner will perhaps provide what the NHS has requested, so again without any details, it’s hard to comment one way or another and they are working with existing software installations that may need upgrading or replacement too. Cerner has many hospital installations in place in the US. BD
The National Health Service in England wants to see Cerner Corp. and British software vendor iSoft quickly improve their ability to implement electronic health records software.
Cerner and iSoft are the EHR subcontractors of prime contractors BT and Computer Sciences Corp. in the Connecting for Health national I.T. program. Christine Connelly, the Department of Health's CIO, has told BT and CSC that they and their partners have until November to prove they can effectively implement EHRs, according to multiple British media reports. The program is four years behind schedule.
The NHS is opening competition to other vendors to offer EHRs in England's Southern Region. CSC and BT have had that business since last May, when NHS terminated prime contractor Fujitsu.
NHS to Cerner & iSoft: Perform Better
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As of today, the status of the flu has not been changed so we are still as listed yesterday. Awareness and concern is rising as indicated by the additional visits to the ER. The picture below shows Loma Linda putting up a “tent” to handle the over flow of patients. Loma Linda is a pretty large facility to begin with, so this might give you an idea of the influx of patients. BD
The Los Angles Times also has a map whereby you can view current virus activity.
At Loma Linda University Medical Center near San Bernardino, emergency room workers have set up a tent in the parking lot to handle a crush of similar patients. In Chicago, ER visits at the city's biggest children's hospital are double normal levels, setting records at the 121-year-old institution.
Hospitals have increased their supplies of staples such as face masks, and many have trained employees to care for patients out in the field.
In the last three years, California has spent more than $400 million to upgrade its readiness, including purchasing three fully equipped mobile hospitals and nearly 7,200 ventilators to respond to an outbreak of respiratory illness.In Los Angeles, several hospitals are also reporting increased numbers of patients in their emergency rooms, though the surge hasn't caused hospitals to begin diverting other patients, said Cathy Chidester, director of Los Angeles County's Emergency Medical Services Agency.
Hospitals swamped amid flu fears - Los Angeles Times
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Thanks once again to all my readers. I added one additional feature for those who want to read the Medical Quack in another language. On the right hand side you will now see the Microsoft Translator. I have had translation services on the blog before, but now this makes it a lot easier and doesn’t require a secondary page to load, it is a easier to use.
Use the drop down to select your language and give it a few seconds to go to work. I have noticed many in Germany using the translation services quite a bit. A bar appears at the top showing the translation from English to……
Here’s how the page looks in Spanish. All items on the right hand side though may not translate, but all the posts, etc. will be done. To go back to English, just use the x at the top of the translator bar that loads and you go back to English.
This is the page in German. I know I have several European readers and hopefully this might help out. Again, thanks for reading the Medical Quack and pass the word along. BD
Thanks once again to all my readers. I added one additional feature for those who want to read the Medical Quack in another language. On the right hand side you will now see the Microsoft Translator. I have had translation services on the blog before, but now this makes it a lot easier and doesn’t require a secondary page to load, it is a easier to use.
Use the drop down to select your language and give it a few seconds to go to work. I have noticed many in Germany using the translation services quite a bit. A bar appears at the top showing the translation from English to……
Here’s how the page looks in Spanish. All items on the right hand side though may not translate, but all the posts, etc. will be done. To go back to English, just use the x at the top of the translator bar that loads and you go back to English.
This is the page in German. I know I have several European readers and hopefully this might help out. Again, thanks for reading the Medical Quack and pass the word along. BD
The test results should be in soon to confirm. Neither individual knew the other one and both had recently been to Mexico, so it appears there may be the first 2 cases on the map for Orange County. 
Also in the news in Boston, Harvard’s Dental School Treatment clinic has been temporarily closed as a precaution as a third year student developed a probable case. The clinic is tracking down anyone who may have had contact, either fellow employee or students. BD
From earlier today:
Test results are expected to confirm as soon as Friday that two Irvine men, including an 18-year-old University High student, are the county's first cases of swine flu, health officials said.
The Health Care Agency on Thursday announced the two probable cases: The student and a 26-year-old man. Both young men had recently traveled to Mexico but do not know each other. Neither was hospitalized and the 26-year-old received antiviral medication.
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This is an interesting story all the way around. First of all I hope all the medical devices found were disconnected from the Internet until the FDA gives the stamp of approval. The manufacturer also said the device was not meant to be connected to the internet, but it was. Last week in the story about Morgan Hill and the cyber attack, the hospital’s system failed and paper charts were used for a day and they discovered they were more dependent on the outside world and web than originally thought. 
What I find is really strange is the 90 day requirement for patches to be applied from the FDA. Does the FDA review Windows Patches to make sure the software running the imaging equipment is ok? That would be the only reason I can think of for this to occur. There were over 300 similar devices found in hospitals that were infected. Come to think of it, the last computer in the world one would expect an attack would be from an MRI machine. Hearings are scheduled to change this law, thank goodness.
The FDA has had their own issues with getting up to date with technology and this somewhat adds one more issue, but this may not be their fault. With Web 2.0 it could be hard to keep some devices from being connected but again the individual device and use may tell the story better there. Nice that this was found or we could have experienced the cyber attack of the MRI machine with some potentially ugly images. BD
A computer worm that has alarmed security experts around the world has crawled into hundreds of medical devices at dozens of hospitals in the United States and other countries, according to technologists monitoring the threat.
The worm, known as "Conficker," has not harmed any patients, they say, but it poses a potential threat to hospital operations.
"A few weeks ago, we discovered medical devices, MRI machines, infected with Conficker," said Marcus Sachs, director of the Internet Storm Center, an early warning system for Internet threats that is operated by the SANS Institute.
Around March 24, researchers monitoring the worm noticed that an imaging machine used to review high-resolution images was reaching out over the Internet to get instructions — presumably from the programmers who created Conficker.
The researchers dug deeper and discovered that more than 300 similar devices at hospitals around the world had been compromised. The manufacturer of the devices told them none of the machines were supposed to be connected to the Internet — and yet they were. And because the machines were running an unpatched version of Microsoft's operating system used in embedded devices they were vulnerable.
"For 90 days these infected machines could easily be used in an attack, including, for example, the leaking of patient information," said Rodney Joffe, a senior vice president at NeuStar, a communications company that belongs to an industry working group created to deal with the worm. "They also could be used in an attack that affects other devices on the same networks."
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_12257206?nclick_check=1
Hat Tip: quanta vie
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Yesterday I posted about Microsoft Amalga and the New Life Sciences software to be added. I mention this as the Life Sciences folks are the ones that operate fast and quickly to create custom solutions as needed and with Swine flu, I can imagine they are busy. Again, I hope to have my recent interview posted soon with Microsoft Life Sciences.
With the outbreak of Swine flu, Virtual Earth also has a mapping program below to track and review the related stories. You can also subscribe via RSS to follow. The links are listed below.
RSS Feed for Live Maps on Swine Flu -Virtual Earth
El Camino Hospital also just recently announced the opening of their Genomics Center which will help in creating and finding cures and treatment plans for patients, personalized medicine.
In addition to aggregating data, Amalga is also extremely helpful with needed analytical and reporting functions. BD
Within a matter of hours, clinicians at El Camino modified a few fields within Amalga to capture information specific to possible flu cases coming through the hospital’s busy emergency room. The result is a real-time dashboard that is keeping hospital officials appraised of possible swine flu cases at El Camino and will help them respond appropriately should one or more cases be confirmed. Clinicians are praising Amalga for the solution’s flexibility and the way it can be adapted to meet specific organizational needs as they arise.
Microsoft has announced plans to provide guidance to other Amalga customers so they too can immediately begin using the solution to
monitor flu activity. This could prove especially valuable where Amalga has been deployed to gather community-wide clinical data. One example of that is the Wisconsin Health Information Exchange where more than a dozen emergency rooms in the state are now able to share real-time clinical data thanks to Microsoft Amalga.
HealthBlog : Monitoring the Pulse of a Pandemic
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This is California, the Long Beach campus gave out masks and flooded with news, but few were wearing them, unlike what we saw in the CNN video in Mexico. I guess the potential seriousness has not sunk in yet. Forth Worth, Dallas has shut down the school system for 10 days in Texas. 
Today, WHO warned of a a global pandemic.
“Schools in 14 states have shut their doors on more than 160,000 schoolchildren as the nation's swine flu crisis enters its second week.”
And the spread appears far from over. A small cluster of infections appears to be emerging in Washington state. In Washington, D.C., the World Bank issued a statement Thursday morning that a staff member who had traveled to Mexico on business April 14-18 has been "preliminarily diagnosed" with swine flu. The CDC has yet to confirm the diagnosis of the individual, who is a Maryland resident, according to the statement.
You can’t stop living your life, but precautions should be noticed and taken where needed. BD
LONG BEACH Swine flu moved closer to Orange County on Wednesday as one new case emerged in San Bernardino County and probable cases were reported in Los Angeles and Riverside counties. The university has set up a hotline to answer students' questions at (562) 985-1460 and is updating its website: www.csulb.edu.
But so far, Orange County has remained swine flu free.
One of the probable cases reported Wednesday involves a student at Cal State Long Beach, who lives in a dorm room and who is recovering from what appears to be a mild illness, school officials confirmed Wednesday.
In an email sent to students and faculty, university president F. King Alexander said the student received a "probable positive" test result from the Long Beach Health Department. Statewide, the tally of confirmed swine flu cases stayed steady at 14, but the number of probable cases jumped to 29, including two cases in Los Angeles County, four in Riverside County, one in San Bernardino County, and eight in San Diego County, the California Department of Public Health's Gil Chavez reported.
Swine flu closes in on O.C. | county, student, health, cases, swine - Life - OCRegister.com
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CNN put out a video showing what it looks like in Mexico, including a hospital and how healthcare professionals are reacting and treating patients. Hope it doesn’t get to this point here in the US. As you can see, there’s a lot of confusion too with information and what and what not to do. BD
Fear and skepticism on the streets of Mexico have led to panic buying and deep suspicions about the government.
Can officials handle a deadly swine flu epidemic, many people are asking, and are authorities lying about what's really going on?
You can't find a bottle of hand sanitizer or a face mask for sale anywhere in town, said resident Adrian Garrido. He admits to his own panic buying: bottled water, canned goods and powdered milk for his two sons, ages 6 months and 6 years.
Swine flu fears grip Mexico - CNN.com
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This even happened in the UK, but it can happen anywhere. I have seen it here, flash drives lost containing patient information, and sometimes not encrypted either. Most of the manufacturers today include a menu whereby information can be encrypted, but there are many that do not.
Why in the world do hospitals and other healthcare agencies still allow unlimited use of these devices? This is not only a security breach waiting to happen, but also a potential virus or worm infection for the network. Read the link below on what happened to the Department of Defense, the worm got in via a flash drive! This is not to say flash drives are not useful by any means, carry your pictures and whatever information you want but encrypt the information if it is valuable, but quit carrying around patient health care information on the drives if you are a health care professional.
Patient information should remain on secured servers and as you read in this story, the drive was found at the car wash, wonderful place for patient records to be laying around. With a network and Group Policy and the Active Directory, exceptions can be made for those who absolutely need to transfer information in this fashion, but again, that type of data would more or less lend itself to areas outside of patient data, like administration type of files. There are also flash drives that store access information, so that could be another good use with tokens that need to match as well, but again what I am talking about here are physicians typing up Word documents with vital patient information and carrying them around on a flash drive with no encryption, which should not be done. An IT department too will have the skills and knowledge as well on how to work with flash drives too and they also set the policies. One good idea too is to have anti virus software on the drive, again as the DOD learned in a hard lesson in this area. BD
A hospital trust in Cambridgeshire has been ordered to tighten security after a memory stick with medical treatment details of 741 patients went missing.
Cambridge University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Addenbrooke's Hospital, was found to be in breach of the Data Protection Act.
The memory stick, which was privately owned, was discovered by a car wash attendant who was able to access the contents to establish ownership and returned it to the Trust.
Three other health trusts have also been found to have breached the Data Protection Act: Central Lancashire Primary Care Trust, North West London Hospitals NHS Trust and Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust.
BBC NEWS | England | Cambridgeshire | Security tightened over data loss
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This is great news for the new operating system for Windows Mobile. I use a Windows Mobile Cell Phone and already use some of the voice 
commands available in Live Search on the device. It certainly makes it easier than inputting all the information via keyboard. As I understand, the service will be free and have the ability to speak outgoing text messages, nice!
Additional information can be read at the site. Just last week I posted about Windows Mobile Units soon being able to provide medical ultra sound imaging. See the related reading below for the post. BD
Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s Tellme subsidiary is announcing a voice service that will be available to carriers and manufacturers for free for use on Windows Mobile 6.5 this fall. Users will be able to push a button on their phone to activate the service and say things like "Text Steve Jones" and the device would open up the SMS application, create a new message and pre-address it to Steve Jones.
The service will allow much more than just that. You can say "Call Mark Smith" and the phone will initiate the call for you. If you have more than one number for him, it will ask you to specify which number (work, mobile, home, etc) to dial. If you said "Pizza in Kansas City" the service would find a pizza place in Kansas City for you through Microsoft's Live search service.
Microsoft's Tellme Voice Service For Windows Mobile - Mobile Blog – InformationWeek
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With the way advertising works today and the internet, it didn’t take long for shirts and games to appear. If you don’t get enough with just the daily news updates, you can now entertain yourself too. We just can’t get away from entertaining ourselves it appears, no matter what the topic is. Perhaps this is a way to relieve stress levels?
As this article states too, watch out for the spammers on the topic, they are out there too. BD
Over the last few days, the TechCrunch tips box has been flooded with pitches from companies looking to capitalize on ‘Swine Flu’, the
potentially pandemic disease that is currently freaking out a significant portion of Earth’s inhabitants. Now that everyone is stressing about it, what better time to make a buck, right?
First, there’s Flu Shirts, an online T-Shirt marketplace brought to you by some of the people behind Groopvine. The store has a variety of shirts mocking the current hysteria, emblazoned with taglines like “Maybe the Muslims were right about pigs” and “My dad went to Mexico and all he got me was swine flu”.
Then there’s Swine Fighter
a Flash game from the guys who brought you HeyZap
This shows a clear new effort to help educate patients on what their genetic background could hold in store, and is one more step with bringing personalized medicine knowledge to the public. This is not a complete sequence, but rather an informative DNA study that can stand to offer information relative to potential areas to keep an eye open for.
From the website:
You can also participate as a retail customer on your own. BD
NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – California's Palomar Pomerado Health will offer 23andMe's genome service at its outpatient centers in San Diego, the companies said today.
The direct-to-consumer genomics service company said that the agreement with PPH marks the first time that its Personal Genome Service will be available for sale outside of its website.
Under the partnership, PPH will offer the service for $399 at two of its retail health centers in Escondido and Rancho Penasquitos, and at the Pomerado Outpatient Pavilion in Poway. Patients at these centers interested in the service will receive a personal session with a PPH nurse practitioner to discuss the PGS service.
California Outpatient Centers Offering 23andMe Service | GenomeWeb Daily News | GenomeWeb
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The State of Texas is especially on alert with those crossing over the border. BD
HOUSTON — A 23-month-old boy from Mexico City became the first person to die of swine flu in the United States after being airlifted two weeks ago to a Houston hospital from the border town of Brownsville, where he had been visiting relatives, officials said.
The boy had “several underlying health problems,” state health officials said, declining to give details.
The toddler who died had flown from Mexico City to Matamoros, Mexico, with his mother and siblings on April 3, officials said. The family crossed over to Brownsville that night to visit an aunt, and two days later drove to Houston, where his mother had a doctor’s appointment, said Carlos Cascos, the chief executive of Cameron County, which includes Brownsville.
Mexican Child Visiting U.S. 1st to Die Here of Swine Flu - NYTimes.com
This is also very interesting what he has to say about the strain, and what makes up the composition. It is called the Swine flu as that contains 2 parts, but there’s also one part bird and one part human, so it’s a bit complex. By getting a flu shot, you are being protected against the human side of the virus, but perhaps not the other portions. His mission is to find out more about why Mexico and more of the origins to perhaps add information that the rest of the world as well as Mexico can use. BD
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) -- CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta has gone to Mexico, the apparent epicenter of the swine flu outbreak where more than 100 people have died in suspected cases.
CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta, reporting outside a Mexico City hospital, says people can't get swine flu by eating pork.
With governments scrambling to prevent further outbreak, Gupta appeared Monday on CNN to address people's concerns.
CNN: We got a question that comes to us over Twitter. This question, "I heard that you can't contract swine flu from eating pork. Is that true? If so, why? Does cooking or curing pork destroy the virus?"
Gupta: It is true. You cannot catch it from eating the pork. And it is true that cooking it to a certain temperature, around 160 degrees, also inactivates most of the pathogens in the pork as well.
This particular virus seems to be a combination of several different strains: two strains of swine flu, one strain of bird flu and one strain of human flu. It's the human flu that that flu shot may protect slightly against. So you're protecting against a part of the virus if that makes any sense.
A current treatment, docetaxel (Taxotere) has some pretty bad side effects, but Provenge can extend life without the nasty chemo effects. What 
was a bit of a big sideline today was watching the stock, it was a real roller coaster, questioned and verified by Nasdaq. The Wall Street Journal has some of the news here.
Motley Fool was upset enough to state that an SEC investigation be pursued. More from today’s announcement can be read at the website.
This is probably one of the most dramatic stories over the last few years on the development of a drug. There were protests when the FDA denied it’s approval and wanted more information in 2007, death threats and law suits against those who allegedly had conflicts of interest on the FDA panel. Rallies were staged in Washington, so this is just a very brief recap in a couple sentences. About this time last year an anonymous backer helped supply some of the funds needed to keep the company going.
The company was sued after the FDA denial. The FDA was sued. The Care to Live Organization filed the lawsuit against the FDA and other individuals which was eventually dismissed.
The company has had nine lives if not more and hopefully it will come to a good conclusion with the FDA when an application for approval is filed.
In the meantime, what in the world was up with their stock today? Some folks I believe lost some big chunks of money. BD 
Suspense has been building for two weeks about just how good Dendreon’s big clinical trial results were going to be, and when the results finally came out today, fans of the company had nothing to be disappointed about.
Earlier in the day, we reported what readers needed to remember about the context of this trial, and then we reported the most essential facts when the data appeared. A clinical trial of 512 men, called Impact, showed that patients lived a median time of 25.8 months if they got Provenge, Dendreon’s experimental immune-booster, compared to 21.7 months for those on a placebo. This finding represents a 4.1 month advantage in median survival on the drug. The p-value, which tells statisticians whether this might have been due to chance, was 0.032, which is well within the FDA’s threshold to certify the finding as legitimate. Side effects were mostly fever and chills that lasted one or two days after injections.
The company plans to take its time to scrub through the records from the trial carefully as it prepares to turn in an amended application to the FDA in the fourth quarter of the year, Gold says. The FDA will then have as long as six months to complete its review of the application, he said.
No Devil in Details: Dendreon Data Stands Up to Scrutiny from Doctors, Investors | Xconomy
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The site will give a quick visual on where Swine Flu is and has been reported. This is what it looks like today and lucky folks in Alaska and Hawaii appear to have been spared so far. Actually from the map you can search the world and check what type of diseases you want to track.
For this example, I just chose Swine Flu. The map is powered by Google.
The US leads the way with 65 alerts, Mexico with 26 alerts as of this screenshot. BD
According to this study, the virtual reps with the e-promotions are turning out to be a bit more popular. Just like anything else that is on the 
computer and internet, it offers the physicians the ability to intertwine at their convenience. A few years ago at several meetings I attended at Microsoft we talked a lot about this, virtual meetings, and now it is coming to pass, but the computers don’t have samples though, but those could also be delivered by a non drug representative via a parcel service too. No matter what it is today, it’s getting harder to find time for people to find time for people. BD
Look no further for more evidence that humanity is getting a little too, er, enamored with the internet. According to a study of pharma e-promotions, almost three-fourths of doctors said they'd just as soon talk with a computer than with a drug rep--and some even preferred the computer.
If this study is to be believed, it's clear why e-promotion is on the move. More than two-thirds of physicians said they had a positive attitude toward this type of interaction with drugmakers. Perhaps that's because they could do so at their leisure. Almost 70 percent said they did their e-promos in the evenings. Or perhaps it's just because they don't have to make conversation.
There’s quite a bit going on this week, and one expo in particular is the Annual Bio-IT Conference. Today, Microsoft announced Amalga Life Sciences Software. The press release and early adapters follows below. Additional Information can be read at the Bio-IT website.
Yesterday, the site spoke about Trialx and being able to Tweet for Trials.
I have an up and pending interview with Mike Naimoli, a biopharmaceutical scientist and the Director of Life Sciences for the US Region for Microsoft that should also be posted here soon too. The Microsoft Trento Centre is listed is as an early adapter and you can read more from one of my previous posts here about the center in Italy. They use Algorithmic systems biology to benefit both worlds with a new breed of scientists.
What I learned with Life Sciences is that most hospitals or other health organizations are only analyzing 3% of the available data, thus there’s a lot of unused valuable information being left ton the the table. When you bring this additional information into Clinical Trials, it can not only speed up the process but with drug development potential side effects and other elements are identified at a much faster pace, and I have to say this too, it will end up keeping some of the cost in line, maybe not cheaper, but perhaps a bit more predictable.
The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center is right on the list and an early participant with Microsoft Life Sciences and more can be read below. The “Concept Brower” allows the creation of “what if” situations to explore and analyze. BD
Press Release:
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center among early adopters of Microsoft Amalga Life Sciences.
BOSTON — April 28, 2009 — At the Bio-IT World Conference & Expo, Microsoft Corp. introduced Amalga Life Sciences, a new software system designed to transform healthcare and life science research data into the critical knowledge needed for the discovery of new personalized treatments. Microsoft Amalga Life Sciences helps organizations across the life sciences spectrum achieve the next level of research capability by connecting data and investigators in new ways through novel storage capabilities, ontology management functions and a semantic query environment powered by a next-generation reasoning engine.
“Our researchers face an overwhelming challenge to collect, analyze, interpret and share complex data from a wide range of diseases and experiments,” said Lee Hartwell, Ph.D., president and director, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and 2001 Nobel Laureate. “We look forward to exploring the potential of Amalga Life Sciences to help us understand this data in a rich and efficient way and ultimately help us meet our vision of enabling personalized medicine.”
Amalga Life Sciences is designed to manage and analyze heterogeneous experimental and operational research data. The Amalga Life Sciences “hybrid store” manages both simple and complex data, including experimental protocol descriptions and higher-level knowledge representations, giving organizations the opportunity to manage and redesign processes to increase productivity, improve decision-making and reduce errors. In addition, Amalga Life Sciences interfaces with existing and future systems as an open and active software system. This unique system allows life science organizations to provide their investigators with a research environment that assists the scientific investigation and validation of clinical and biological systems.
“The current nature of multidisciplinary research and operating models has led to a research IT landscape that lacks seamless integration and extensibility of data, expresses clinical knowledge inconsistently, and operates on incomplete biological knowledge described by different research contexts,” said Jim Karkanias, senior director of applied research and technology, Microsoft Health Solutions Group. “At its core, Amalga Life Sciences is designed to overcome these issues and enable research organizations to implement new models of research and development for personalized medicine.”
The evolution of current research IT systems has generated a data-rich but knowledge-poor environment. Amalga Life Sciences transforms the disconnected data into a network of information so that its novel reasoning engine may assist investigators to identify direct and indirect relationships between biological and clinical concepts and therefore convey knowledge.
Amalga Life Sciences features a “Concept Browser” for the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) ontology, which enables the user to input and connect multiple concepts via their ontological relationships. The user may choose to connect via all possible connections, to select the depth of connections or to display only the shortest path. The output is displayed to the user as a visual network of concepts and relationships. Once the data is accessible and manageable, subject matter experts can then apply models and theories to data, identify the best solutions to complex problems, and predict new relationships.
Part of the Microsoft Amalga family of enterprise systems, Amalga Life Sciences incorporates the innovative core technology components of Amalga Unified Intelligence System 2009, announced April 6. These core technology components include the ability to integrate data from many disparate systems throughout the organization. Amalga Life Sciences is on display April 27–29 at Bio-IT World in Boston.
About Microsoft in Health
Microsoft is committed to improving health around the world through software innovation. Over the past 12 years, Microsoft has steadily increased its investments in health, with a focus on addressing the challenges of health providers, health and social services organizations, payers, consumers, and life sciences companies worldwide. Microsoft closely collaborates with a broad ecosystem of partners and develops its own powerful health solutions, such as Amalga and HealthVault. Together, Microsoft and its industry partners are working to advance a vision of unifying health information and making it more readily available, ensuring the best quality of life and affordable care for everyone.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass on Microsoft’s corporate information pages. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.mspx.
Additional information below on the early adapters….
Microsoft Amalga Life Sciences
Early Adopters and References
April 27, 2009
David H. Murdock Research Institute (DHMRI), Kannapolis, NC
Overview: The David H. Murdock Research Institute was established as a nonprofit organization to support groundbreaking research at the North Carolina Research Campus. Funded through a private grant by David H. Murdock, the DHMRI, with its state of the art facilities and capabilities, was established to be the catalyst in the development of NCRC as a world class research park. DHMRI and NCRC will host the world’s leading scientists to promote a level of unprecedented scientific collaboration and public-private partnerships never before possible in the areas of agriculture, nutrition, and human health.
Use Case: For the DHMRI, Microsoft Amalga Life Sciences will enable scientific discovery across the DHMRI’s multidisciplinary life sciences research environment. The DHMRI is unique in the scale and diversity of research that will be conducted in its 11+ Core Laboratories spanning ‘omics sciences, microscopy, clinical discovery and more. Each laboratory is expected to produce complex data, varying in size (up to several petabytes per lab) and format. Amalga Life Science will help scientists better understand the context of their data, turn it into meaningful information and use it to validate new discoveries. Microsoft Amalga Life Sciences will facilitate information integration of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data supporting data acquisition, storage, analysis, inference and publication. By bringing complex information into context, the DHMRI’s researchers will use Microsoft’s Amalga Life Sciences technologies to promote collaboration and novel interpretation of health, nutrition and agriculture in the life sciences.
Quote: “To carry out the mission of our institution, we have to employ flexible, practical and clever IT solutions. Microsoft will play a vital role in helping us achieve our goal at the DHMRI. We expect Amalga Life Sciences will provide an agile infrastructure that will optimize the user experience for our staff working on the front lines of scientific research.”
“We can’t afford to introduce unnecessary complexity into our research environment at the DHRMI. That’s why we’re looking to Microsoft and Amalga Life Sciences to contribute with new methods for analyzing data, promoting collaboration in support of turning information into science, and helping us become the fulcrum of nutrition and life sciences research.”
Dr. Kenneth E. Russell, Chief Information Officer, David H. Murdock Research Institute
Contact: Randy Allen, Ph.D., Director of Business Development, (704) 250-2602
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA
Overview: At Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, interdisciplinary teams of world-renowned scientists and humanitarians work together to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer, HIV/AIDS and other diseases. The organization’s researchers, including three Nobel laureates, bring a relentless pursuit and passion for health, knowledge and hope to their work and to the world. For more information, please visit www.fhcrc.org.
Use Case: Machine-assisted generation of hypothesis-driven associations between clinical and experimental data. The FHCRC and Microsoft collaboration will drive the progress and development of an innovative software platform for life science researchers. The collaboration will bring together the world-class domain expertise of FHCRC scientists and the power of Microsoft technologies to integrate, visualize and generate novel hypotheses from cancer research data.
Quote: “At FHCRC, our researchers face an overwhelming challenge to collect, analyze, interpret, and share complex data from a wide range of diseases and experiments. We look forward to exploring Amalga Life Sciences to see if it can help us understand this data in a rich and efficient way and ultimately help us meet our vision of enabling personalized medicine.
Lee Hartwell, Ph.D., President and director, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; Professor of genome sciences and adjunct professor of medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine; American Cancer Society Research Professor of Genetics; 2001 Nobel Laureate
LineaGen Inc., Salt Lake City
Overview: LineaGen, Inc. is a Salt Lake City-based specialty diagnostics company that provides innovative tests and services for the earlier and more informative diagnoses of Autism and Multiple Sclerosis. LineaGen will provide diagnostic testing services through a CLIA-certified laboratory, including proprietary tests discovered and developed as a result of LineaGen’s core genetic research programs as well as current standard-of-care tests. Integrated with LineaGen’s laboratory testing will be value-add services including comprehensive, personalized interpretation of test results, secure electronic communication/web portal for reporting and client queries, clinical and genetic counseling for patients, their families, and their physicians, and consultation/advocacy for third-party payor reimbursement.
Use Case: LineaGen will collaborate with Microsoft and Navigenics to create an unprecedented resource designed to aid in the understanding of how genetic variation contributes to human health and disease. The collaboration will ultimately collect and evaluate the genetic and health information from millions of individuals, and perform interventional trials to improve the effectiveness of preventive health strategies. Preventive health strategies include efforts to effect behavior change, improve health and wellness, improve drug compliance, and to reduce disease burden based on genetic risk data. LineaGen provides a collection of unique genotypic and phenotypic assets, which will initially enable the collaboration to establish a unique foundational resource that will grow over time.
Quote: “We are very excited to collaborate with Microsoft and Navigenics to deliver a large-scale, innovative platform for understanding the linkages between genetics and disease, and to delivering this understanding as novel products and services in the personalized health care market. Combining our expertise and technology assets, we will uncover patterns in health and genetic data whose outcomes will make an impact on the ability of individuals to manage their personal health and wellness more effectively.”
Michael Paul, Ph.D., LineaGen President and CEO
Contact: Alex S. Lindell
Director, Business Development
LineaGen, Inc.
801.931.6200 | Main
801.931.6207 | Directb
alindell@lineagen.com
Microsoft Research - University of Trento Centre for Computational and Systems Biology (CoSBi), Trento Italy
Overview: CosBi is a non-profit limited liability consortium shared 50 percent by the University of Trento and 50 percent by Microsoft Research Cambridge. CoSBi’s primary goal is to perform research activities and develop specific languages and mechanisms of modeling, analyses and simulations in the fields of medical science, biology, bio-information and complex systems in general. The Centre principally focuses on research in the field of innovative computer science technology in interdisciplinary fields.
Use Case: The CoSBi and Microsoft collaboration will drive the progress and development of Amalga Life Sciences to assist the interpretation of biological systems using process calculi-based conceptual and computational tools developed by CoSBi. Using the DataNet storage of Amalga Life Sciences to persist models of biological systems, CoSBi will apply algorithmic systems biology by using the BlenX programming language to demonstrate how to move from solvable to executable models of biological systems.
Quote: “We are excited to collaborate with Health Solutions Group on their latest product offering, Amalga Life Sciences. The collaboration is an excellent opportunity for CoSBi and Microsoft to push the boundaries of Systems Biology. By using the Amalga Life Sciences, we will be able to persist our models of biological systems and apply the BlenX language to specify workflows that predict the behavior of multi-level, multi-scale biological systems in a modular, compositional, scalable and executable manner in a way not possible before.”
Corrado Priami, President and CEO of the Microsoft Research - University of Trento Centre for Computational and Systems Biology
Related Reading:
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Math–This Could be a Subject for Michael Moore to Explore and Document In a Movie
Screenings Too–Killer Algorithms Part 12–Medical Billing Codes Style
Assessing Consumer Credit Scores–Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 21 With Flawed Data
Duping” Society Combined With A World of Rogue Algorithms & Flawed Data Continues In Markets As Seen With Knight Capital This Week-Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 36
Study Fraud With EHR Technologies, Namely Medical Records/Billing Software Used by Hospitals– HHS And SEC Continue Getting Their Non-Algorithmic Fannies Kicked–Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 46
SilverScript Senior Drug Program Sanctioned by Medicare Until the Payment And Billing Algorithms are Cleaned Up-Killer Algorithms Chapter 53
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