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A Field Of Medicine That Wants To Know Where You Live

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Whether you live in the city or the countryside can affect your health and susceptibility for disease. Jason Hawkes/Corbis hide caption

Whether you live in the city or the countryside can affect your health and susceptibility for disease.

In 1854, an English doctor named John Snow pinpointed an outbreak of cholera in London to a single contaminated water pump.

A pioneer of modern epidemiology, Snow used information about where the sick people lived to deduce that they were drinking tainted water from that source.

And while using clues about peoples' locations is an important tool in public health, it's now set to make individual health care even more personal.

"Personalized medicine has ... been equated with genomics," says Dr. Rishi Manchandra, author of The Upstream Doctors: Medical Innovators Track Sickness to Its Source and presenter of a TED Talk about environmental influences on health last August. "That's an incomplete view of what personalized means. We are not just creatures of our genes; we are creatures of our environment."

It seems obvious, but doctors don't traditionally ask their patients where they live as part of a medical diagnosis.

A map of toxic waste sites can be combined with maps of waterways and cities to reveal potential health risks. Bill Davenhall/Esri hide caption

A map of toxic waste sites can be combined with maps of waterways and cities to reveal potential health risks.

Some researchers and health professionals are calling the use of mapping in health care "geomedicine," due in part to a 2009 TED Talk by Bill Davenhall, considered the field's father. Clinical data account for only 10 percent of the factors that determine a person's health, Davenhall says.

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A Field Of Medicine That Wants To Know Where You Live

Can we predict the future of medicine?

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Treating HIV used to require a complex regimen of medications -- a schedule that was difficult to adhere to, especially for people in developing nations. Atripla changed that by combining three antiretroviral drugs into one daily "cocktail" pill. The FDA approved Atripla in 2006. In 2013, Gilead Sciences received approval to sell its Stribild pill, which combines four HIV medications into one dose. Better known as minimally invasive surgery, laparoscopic surgery has become the norm for many operations, including gallbladder removal, hernia repair and appendectomies. Patients who undergo laparoscopic procedures generally endure less pain, smaller scars and a shorter recovery time. Up next for surgeons? An increase in natural orifice procedures, where surgeries are performed through an opening like your mouth or anus. Birth control packages traditionally supply hormone pills for 21 days and placebo pills for seven, bringing a period once a month. But in 2003, the FDA approved Seasonale, a new kind of birth control that enabled women to have full periods only four times a year. In 2007, the FDA approved Lybrel, the first oral contraceptive designed to stop a woman's period indefinitely. With these drugs on the market, women now have more choices when it comes to when -- or if -- they have a monthly cycle.

10 breakthrough medical advances

Human Genome Project

Stem cell research

HIV 'cocktails'

Targeted cancer therapies

Laparoscopic surgery

Smoke-free laws

HPV vaccine

Face transplants

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Can we predict the future of medicine?

Testimonial 1 for Energy Medicine by Elaine: Bridging The Gap between Medical & Spiritual – Video

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Testimonial 1 for Energy Medicine by Elaine: Bridging The Gap between Medical Spiritual
http://www.ReikiTherapybyElaine.com ~ Lauren M. #39;s Testimonial for Energy Medicine Reiki Therapy by Elaine can be found on yelp: ...

By: Energy Medicine Reiki Therapy by Elaine

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Testimonial 1 for Energy Medicine by Elaine: Bridging The Gap between Medical & Spiritual - Video

"3D in Medicine" A free 2-hour live seminar with an international panel of experts – Video

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"3D in Medicine" A free 2-hour live seminar with an international panel of experts
Join us as we provide a live seminar on how medical scanning works, dentistry in the 21st century, how to take your own medical scans and 3D print them, and meet the boy and the 3D print shop...

By: All Things 3D

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"3D in Medicine" A free 2-hour live seminar with an international panel of experts - Video

FDA awards grants to stimulate drug, device development for rare diseases

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced it has awarded 15 grants totaling more than $19 million to boost the development of medical device, drug, and biological products for patients with rare diseases, with at least a quarter of the funding going to studies focused solely on pediatrics.

The FDA awards grants for clinical studies on safety and/or effectiveness of products that could either result in, or substantially contribute to, approval of the products.

The FDA is in a unique position to help those who suffer from rare diseases by offering several important incentives to promote the development of products for rare diseases, one of which is this grants program, said Gayatri R. Rao, M.D., director of the FDAs Office of Orphan Product Development. The grants awarded this year support much-needed research in difficult-to-treat diseases that have little, or no, available treatment options.

The program is administered through the FDAs Orphan Products Grants Program. This program was created by the Orphan Drug Act, passed in 1983, to promote the development of products for rare diseases. Since its inception, the program has given more than $330 million to fund more than 530 new clinical studies on developing treatments for rare diseases and has been used to bring more than 50 products to marketing approval.

A panel of independent experts with experience in the disease-related fields reviewed the grant applications and made recommendations to the FDA.

The 2014 grant recipients are:

For the grants program therapies, a disease or condition is considered rare if it affects less than 200,000 persons in the United States. There are about 7,000 rare diseases and conditions, according to the National Institutes of Health. In total, nearly 30 million Americans suffer from at least one rare disease.

The FDA, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, protects the public health by assuring the safety, effectiveness, and security of human and veterinary drugs, vaccines and other biological products for human use, and medical devices. The agency also is responsible for the safety and security of our nations food supply, cosmetics, dietary supplements, products that give off electronic radiation, and for regulating tobacco products.

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FDA awards grants to stimulate drug, device development for rare diseases

See the Birth of Modern Medicine in These Photos

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More ABC US news | ABC Health NewsCopy

The early days of modern medicine, before penicillin and anesthesia, can seem gruesome by today's standards. But archivist and collector of medical photography, Dr. Stanley Burns, thinks its important to look back at the early days of medicine understand how far modern medicine has come in just over 100 years.

Burns, the founder and archivist of the Burns Archive, has lots of evidence about how crude early medical treatments could be at the beginning of the last century. From electroshock for blindness to scoliosis cures that look torturous, the haunting photographs from the Burns archive can be beautiful and scary reminders of how rudimentary medicine was just a century ago.

The doctors 100 years ago were just as smart and interested in helping their patients as we are today, Burns told ABC News. The problem was they labored under inferior knowledge and technology.

Burns photography archive includes thousands of pictures ranging from early medical operations to Civil War-era photos of wounded soldiers, some of which were featured in a show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

His newest exhibition is decidedly more macabre. Its a collection of memorial photography, which are pictures of the deceased for loved ones, mainly from the turn of the 19th century.

The photographs of the posed deceased are being featured at the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn, New York, until this January.

Cinemax

PHOTO: On "The Knick" an ambulance circa 1900 is a simple horse drawn carriage.

Earlier this year, Burns incredible knowledge about the birth of modern medicine has been utilized at his newest side-job -- medical adviser on the Cinemax drama The Knick.

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IBM Watson lends analytic power to genomic medicine

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Summary: IBM has detailed new marching orders for the Watson Analytics cognitive computing platform helping doctors uncover the patterns that cause disease.

Speaking today at the 2014 Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovation Summit, IBM chairman Ginni Rometty detailed new marching orders for the Watson Analytics cognitive computing platform helping doctors uncover the patterns that cause disease.

With help from the Lerner Research Institute's Genomic Medicine Institute, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic will use IBM's Watson Genomics Analytics to harness the powers of big data to spot genetic indicators for certain cancers. From there, doctors can formulate individualized treatment plans based on the patient's DNA.

IBM says Watson has a unique ability to overcome the "needle in the haystack" challenge that often arises with genomic mapping. Doctors need to be able to correlate data from genome sequencing to reams of medical journals, new studies and clinical records while also treating the patient with the best available procedures.

That's where Watson comes in. The Watson Genomics Analytics application is a combination of Watson's cognitive system, deep computational biology models and IBM's public cloud infrastructure SoftLayer.

With its ability to rapidly review massive databases and continually learn with each new patient scenario, researchers and doctors hope Watson will allow them to increase the number of patients who have access to the tailored care options.

"The potential for leveraging the capabilities of Watson's cognitive computing engine in personalized medicine could not be timelier," said Dr. Charis Eng, chair and founding director of the Lerner Research Institute's Genomic Medicine Institute. "Clinicians will benefit from the knowledge and insight provided by Watson in the care of their patients."

This isn't the first foray Watson has made into healthcare. The super computer has also been utilized by the Mayo Clinic, as well as through IBM's partnerships with healthcare providers such as WellPoint and Memorial Sloan-Kettering. IBM even says the latest pilot initiative with the Cleveland Clinic is an extension of on-going programs with the renowned cancer treatment center that aim to aid in the advancement of big data in healthcare.

"Using Watson's cognitive computing capabilities, Cleveland Clinic aims to offer cutting-edge care to millions of patients," said Rob Merkel, VP of IBM Watson Group Healthcare Leader. "We're excited by our continued partnership with Cleveland Clinic. Together we aim to advance a new era of cognitive computing that will aide in the acceleration of new discoveries and bring forward new breakthroughs in personalized medicine."

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IBM Watson lends analytic power to genomic medicine

Three-company collaboration announced for advancement of aging research

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

28-Oct-2014

Contact: Michael Petr michael.petr@insilicomedicine.com InSilico Medicine, Inc. @InSilicoMeds

Through this unique partnership, the Baltimore-based Insilico Medicine and Lethbridge-based CCARL will provide expertise in aging research and build on the personalized medicine and drug discovery platforms OncoFinder and GeroScope to develop new systems for age-related diseases. During the first phase of collaboration, Insilico Medicine and CCARL drug discovery and personalized medicine efforts will focus on Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and Plantbiosis will simultaneously validate the system, experimentally.

Through its agreement with the University of Lethbridge, Plantbiosis has access to state of the art gene expression, sequencing, epigenetic research, metagenomic, cell line banks and cell culture facilities. It also brings over five years of experience in data acquisition, mining and processing and complements access to infrastructure with a team of trained scientists and technicians.

"Aging is a true global pandemic, which kills more people daily than any other disease and extending productive longevity will not only decrease pain and suffering, but will also provide a significant boost to the global economy. However, before we can look for interventions that may be effective in slowing down the aging processes, we need to understand the systemic changes in defensive and pathological states in many age-related diseases. We started this journey in cancer and now we are going after other diseases that will help us gather the data for a grand plan of attack on aging. And while we are already helping improve decision making in clinical oncology with OncoFinder, we are happy to collaborate on development of a platform to better personalize disease modifying drugs for treatment of multiple sclerosis", said Olga Kovalchuk, MD/PhD, MBA, CEO of Canada Cancer and Aging Research Laboratories, Ltd.

During the course of collaboration, the companies will build a statistical database of tissue-specific changes in signalome, interactome and epigenome in a variety of age-related diseases and normal aging to understand the intricate interplay between pathologic and defensive states.

"We are very happy to partner with CCARL and Plantbiosis led by the highly-productive ambitious and driven scientists, who are looking beyond classical approaches to age-related disease research and are going after the grand prize, which is aging. They are looking to change the biomedical paradigm from treatment to prevention and are the only companies in Canada with the vision and tools to do that", said Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, CEO of Insilico Medicine, Inc.

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Three-company collaboration announced for advancement of aging research


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