CIMIT Annual Congress

Neurotech projects on display at CIMIT

This past Wednesday was CIMIT's annual Innovation Congress in Boston. For those who don't know, CIMIT - Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology is a "non-profit consortium of Boston teaching hospitals and engineering schools, CIMIT fosters interdisciplinary collaboration among world-class experts in medicine, science and engineering, in concert with industry and government, to rapidly improve patient care." They have active programs in areas I find important and intellectually stimulating include neurotechnology, tissue engineering, and global health initiatives.

Many of the attendees are technology and/or medical professionals, but there was plenty to interest the non-specialist.

Clay Christensen of Harvard Business School took us through the highlights of his book from last year The Innovator's Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care with analysis and prescriptions on health care cost reduction that sound simple but go deeper with analysis than what is being thrown about in Washington. For example, technology innovation needs to focus on simpler, decentralized solutions; the business of large hospitals are unsustainable; medical imaging is not going to be adopted until doctors actually want it. I can't do it justice here - read the book - Christensen is one of the true innovative thinkers in business school academia.

Dr. Steve Schacter hosted a panel on the process of developing new treatments with a focus on his specialty of epilepsy. Susan Axelrod, founder of CURE, shared that more people die from epilepsy in the US every year than breast cancer.

And given all the general media interest in "swine flu" a panel on pandemic infectious disease was timely. DARPA's Mike Callahan gave an update on the 2009 virus - the first in 40 years that mingles human, avian, and swine elements - and some of the planning measures being put in place. Per Mike, flu rates dropped 30% in places in Southeast Asia where anti-bacterial hand-washing was put in place. And Dr. Jeffrey Gelfand of Harvard Medical School and Mass General Hospital says there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the supplements EGCG, L-theaine, and Quercetin have clinical value as immune strengthening (yes I am sending Whitney to the store to buy these.)