Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
capacities of existing systems. Therefore, one of the most important challenges for
the computer hardware and software fields is the development of solutions for the
data-rich next generation medicine. The aim must be to speed up the computa-
tional processes and reduce power consumption dramatically before this virtual
patient model can be used in clinical applications.
Only a concerted effort involving all necessary scientific disciplines from
biomedicine to engineering and hardware and software system specialists can
achieve this aim.
6 Information and Communication Technologies
Are the Drivers for Systems Medicine
The ITFoM initiative aims at developing the data-driven 'virtual patient' model
not only for European countries, but with the long-term perspective to be available
to all patients worldwide. To achieve this aim it clearly needs enormous
advancements in the ICT field to handle, store, and process all the data of the
patients in the system. Already today we face bottlenecks in many areas that will
be addressed in the ITFoM initiative.
To demonstrate the needs we face in the near future, a calculation example
might elucidate the situation: The European health system includes around 500
million citizens. For each person the genomic information has to be generated, and
transcriptional information at least needs to be collected continuously from each
individual. If other information on the proteomics and metabolomics levels also
needs to be included, the amount of data per person increases tremendously. To
run an appropriate model, at least 1,000 cell types under 1,000 conditions per
person have to be considered. If the model needs to be used at least twice per year
(when the patient is consulting the clinician) the computing time is in need of
around 10
14
core years. Google uses 900,000 servers with estimated 100 cores per
server; this infrastructure consumes approximately 0.01 % of worldwide elec-
tricity. Using the 'virtual patient' model for every European citizen, 100 times the
worldwide electricity production would be needed to run the simulations (personal
information H. Lehrach).
To allow 'virtual patients' to become part of standard clinical practice, sub-
stantial and intelligent advances must be made in hardware and software infra-
structures, computational paradigms, and human-computer interfaces, as well as in
the instrumentation and automation of techniques and processes required to gather
all relevant information [
4
,
9
].
When forming foundations for large-scale ICT, computing science was driven
by 'large' physics and commercial applications, and medicine played only a minor
role. ICT requirements of the new, data-rich, individualized medicine will soon
surpass the demands of all other (ICT) fields. As data-intensive analysis and
computer-intensive modeling
technologies
become common clinical
practice,
