Researchers have access to a remarkable quantity of information: electronic clinical archives, digital image databases, molecular analyses, and many more. Today the possibilities offered by the most advanced electronic systems to catalog, cross-check, process, and interpret the massive amount of available medical and scientific data open revolutionary prospects for both research and clinical application. The challenge is to identify strategies that will allow physicians and scientists to assimilate this information and rapidly identify significant relations for purposes related to their research, or transform data in applicable knowledge.
This will be the topic of the ninth edition of the Ri.MED Foundation Scientific Symposium entitled FROM PERSONALIZED MEDICINE TO BIG DATA that will take place on October 26-27, 2015 in Rome in the distinguished location of Sala Zuccari in Palazzo Giustiniani, Via della Dogana Vecchia 29, the site of the Senate of the Italian Republic that has granted its High Patronage for this event.
Assessing the uniqueness of each patient, calibrating diagnosis and providing personalized care, allows to considerably increase the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of the medical treatment, raising the focus on prevention, an essential issue of the health policies.
The key words of the revolution triggered by big data are appropriateness and sustainability. The first measures to what extent a diagnostic or therapeutic choice is appropriate for a patient’s requirements and for the clinical setting, according to criteria of efficacy, safety, and cost-effectiveness: the higher the possibilities to personalize diagnosis and care, the more appropriate the according interventions will be.
On the other hand, sustainability accounts for the considerable amount of savings that an effective use of big data can generate: from the use of predictive computational models to streamline the steps of preclinical research, drastically reducing the costs of extended tests and increasing the potential clinical success, to the possibility of personalizing diagnosis and patient care significantly decreasing potential errors and the resulting corrective actions.
The first day of the Symposium, Monday October 26 starting at 3:00 p.m., will be dedicated to Ri.MED Foundation’s research activity that will be illustrated by the Foundation’s Vice President Prof. Bruno Gridelli, by Scientific Director Prof. A.S. Levine, and by a selection of researchers currently working in Pittsburgh, Palermo, Miami and in other state-of-the-art European centers while waiting to join as principal investigators the Biomedical Research and Biotechnological Center (BRBC) that Ri.MED Foundation is establishing near Palermo: a unique opportunity to secure the return to Italy of some brilliant scientists.
Prof. Bruno Gridelli, among the leading specialists in the field of transplantation and Vice President of Ri.MED, also witnesses the Foundation’s growth with great satisfaction: “The goal of the Foundation is to create a workplace technologically-advanced and based on merit allowing researchers to express all their potential. The outcomes of their research will become a powerful driving force for economic and social development”.
The second day, Tuesday, October 27, will focus on the confluence of “big data and personalized medicine”. The first presentation will feature Prof. Jeremy Berg, Director, UPMC Institute for Personalized Medicine, Professor of Computational and Systems Biology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and member of Ri.MED’s Board of Directors.
This presentation will be followed by talks by some of the major international experts on the subject invited by Ri.MED Foundation to contribute to the sharing and dissemination of important scientific outcomes: from prevention and precision oncology medicine, to personalized approaches to decode the genetic complexity of neurological disorders. An international scenario of reference for research and “P4 medicine”: Preventive, Predictive, Personalized, and Participatory.
In the words of Prof. Levine, Scientific Director of the Ri.MED Foundation, “We hope to transform the explosion of health-related data into new tools, technologies, products and services that change the way diseases are prevented and how patients are diagnosed, treated, and engaged in their own care. This symposium brings together outstanding scientists and clinicians to address these transformative issues in biomedicine.”
“Research for the treatment of autoimmune diseases, such as diabetes type 1, will also strongly benefit from an effective use of big data. Big data technologies can become the keystone to optimize immunosuppressive therapies and possibly eliminate anti-rejection drugs by means of immune tolerance induction, with the goal of personalizing therapeutic strategies, or optimizing them, adapting them rigorously to the individual sensitivity and ability to respond of each person”, says Camillo Ricordi, one of the leading experts in research for treatment of diabetes and cell therapies, and President of the Ri.MED Foundation.
Each edition of the Ri.MED Symposium allows participants an opportunity to preview presentations focusing on important and often unpublished scientific results, contributing to the dissemination of scientific knowledge.
PRESS ACCREDITATION: Journalists should request a temporary permit to the press office of the Senate the day before (for Monday by Saturday, October 24) at accrediti.stampa@senato.it and Cc: dsandri@fondazionerimed.com indicating their name, surname, date and place of birth, number of enrollment to the Association of Journalists, and name of newspaper.
Photographers and Radio-TV operators should request a temporary permit to the press office of the Senate by fax at +39 06 670 629 47, specifying: Name and surname / Date and place of birth / ID data / Address and phone number for contacts / Name of newspaper for which photo or TV session is performed / Date and event (26 and/or 27 October 2015 – Ri.MED Symposium) for which temporary permit is requested.