Posted on behalf of James Coffin, vice president and general manager of Dell Healthcare and Life Sciences.
When scientists embarked on the 13-year journey to map the human genome in 1990, they envisioned a future in which the knowledge of DNA would aid in the diagnosis, treatment and even prevention of thousands of diseases and disorders. Fast-forward to 2012 and that dream is closer to reality thanks to ongoing advances at the nexus of high-performance computing and genomics research. Though we have yet to identify cures for diseases such as cancer and AIDS, personalized treatments based on a patient’s molecular makeup – as opposed to a “one size fits all” approach – are enhancing and extending lives.
An essential element to moving forward in the field of personalized medicine is cloud computing technology. The cloud is a future-ready infrastructure that makes it possible to create a healthcare “system” for applied medical research. This system – in which information is secure but accessible to those who need it for analyzing, selecting, and administering treatments – streamlines administration, enhances the quality of care and ultimately supports personalized medicine.
Cloud Trial: Targeting Pediatric Cancer
Dell is providing the secure cloud-based IT infrastructure to support the world’s first personalized medicine clinical trial for pediatric cancer conducted by the Neuroblastoma and Medullobastoma Translational Research Consortium and supported by The Translational Genomics Research Institute. In addition to increasing TGen’s gene sequencing and analysis capacity by more than 1,200 percent, the cloud is also improving collaboration among the researchers and medical professionals working on the trial by allowing them to access the same massive amounts of information, analysis and results regardless of where they are located
The cloud infrastructure – both a high-performance computing resource and a data exchange/collaboration resource – is being used to investigate new technologies that accelerate genetic analysis and identification of targeted treatments for individual neuroblastoma patients. A process that at one time took months to complete (and often required overnight shipment of hard drives from one clinical site to another) has been reduced to days – meaning that patients can begin receiving effective, personalized treatments that much sooner.
The cloud makes it possible for us to bridge the gap between science, medicine and technology to provide a real-time knowledge repository of the latest findings on the most effective treatments for pediatric oncologists to use globally. Imagine the possibilities. Such cloud computing platforms could support complex biomedical knowledge exchanges between healthcare providers, research centers, clinical genomics and molecular diagnostic vendors and pharmaceutical researchers interested in participating in personalized medicine trials targeting many other diseases and disorders.
Every healthcare organization will have its own unique path to cloud adoption, but more and more providers are beginning to see the advantages of moving to the cloud as they work to cut costs, enhance quality, comply with ever-changing regulatory demands and extend their existing IT capabilities. Payers and life sciences companies are seeing the benefits too as they streamline processes to more efficiently manage data and drive innovation. Privacy and security are of paramount concern in healthcare.
In the not-so-distant future, IT will assist not only in documentation and exchange, but also in expert diagnosis and analytics. Because of the amount of data that will be generated, stored and analyzed, the cloud can speed computational
processes, manage and store the resulting data, and provide a forum for analytics and global collaboration. Once we tap the digital data generated by electronic medical records, imaging and genomics research for intelligence, the possibilities for innovation and health advancement are as unlimited as the cloud itself.
As vice president and general manager of Dell Healthcare & Life Sciences, Jamie Coffin co-leads teams in developing the latest innovative information technology and services for healthcare with August Calhoun. Dr. Coffin and his team work closely with a wide variety of leaders in healthcare and life sciences, including medical centers and academic institutions, and leading biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Coffin sets the strategic direction of Dell’s solution strategy and works to pioneer Dell’s efforts to apply leading-edge information technology into areas like personalized medicine, claims processing, medical imaging and advanced pharmaceutical and biotech drug discovery. Dr. Coffin holds a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Arkansas and a Bachelor of Science from Louisiana Tech. He studied at Cambridge University as a Cambridge Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow and was a member of the scientific staff of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois.