(Recorded on September 25, 2012)

Sponsored by Remedy Informatics

Translational researchers need a new informatics framework to enable them to make a significant leap forward in the pace of translating laboratory discoveries into clinical practice---"Translational Research 2.0". In the past, the flow of information across the bench to bedside continuum has been unidirectional and forced, even in the best of circumstances. But today, data and insights from the clinical setting must inform research activities at the bench. Similarly, the relevance of complex laboratory science such as 'omics has become undeniable in the clinical context for individual patients.

Join Chris Asakiewicz and Hank Wu for a presentation of an informatics framework and new technologies that break down traditional barriers between sample management, study management, lab information management systems, electronic notebooks, and clinical registries. This new approach will enable researchers from diverse institutions to aggregate and harmonize traditionally separate data sets and disciplines from laboratory, clinic, and biobank, so they can conduct deep interpretation of the data with powerful pattern recognition tools and gain a true 360-degree view of the biological systems that impact disease and patient. Researchers who adopt this new framework will have a significant advantage in the push for Translational Research 2.0.

Learning Objective:

Understand how an ontology-driven platform enables researchers to aggregate, map and harmonize diverse, complex data sets

Learn how effective cross-institution collaboration can be enabled by web-based integrated research management systems

Learn about the growing importance of, and practical solutions for, integrating biospecimen, laboratory assay, and clinical data into research efforts

Learn how medical and healthcare research organizations can better manage and leverage an increasing volume of complex data and information and translate it into new products and treatments

Who Should Attend:

• Principal Investigators and scientists conducting translational research
• CIOs and CTOs charged with building information systems for translational research
• University and Academic Medical Center leadership responsible for development of infrastructure to support large scale translational research
• Biobanking leadership and scientists working to integrate more effectively with clinical and laboratory research

Program Agenda:

• Intro by Kevin Davies, Editor-In-Chief, Bio-IT World
• Dr. Asakiewicz – Translational Research 2.0 and framework overview; discussion of importance of integrated biobank, clinic, lab information management systems in accelerating cross-disciplinary research, collaboration, and discovery.
• Hank Wu – Discussion of technical challenges; review of technology/architecture necessary to address challenges; presentation of new technology in action with two "case study" examples (NCI Frederick National Lab for Cancer Research, BloodCenter of Wisconsin)
• Q&A moderated by Kevin Davies

Speaker Bios:

Christopher Asakiewicz, PhD.

After twenty-one years in senior IT management roles at Pfizer, Dr. Asakiewicz is currently a Professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology's Wesley J. Howe School of Technology Management. His experience combines the strengths of a practitioner, a consultant and an academic in IT-enabled Business Process, Service Innovation, Knowledge Mining, Biobanking, and Collaborative Research & Discovery, among other areas. He has done pioneering work in the areas of Knowledge Mining and its application within Life Sciences, most notably as a means of mining visualizing and synthesizing clinical research findings, and Enterprise-level Application, Information and Business Process Rationalization. Dr. Asakiewicz also currently serves as President of IT Strategy & Management Consulting, LLC, a consulting firm focused on the pharmaceutical, life sciences and healthcare sectors. Dr. Asakiewicz recently published a whitepaper titled "Translational Research 2.0", available for download at www.remedyinformatics.com/products/white-papers.

Hank Wu

Hank Wu is the Director of Translational Informatics at Remedy Informatics. He has broad experience in bioinformatics software development, life science database engineering, and developing research 'omics informatics infrastructure. Prior to joining Remedy, Hank served as Director of Operations at the National Cancer Institute's Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, with responsibility for a $100M+ portfolio spanning discovery and clinical informatics, high-throughput biomedical computing, and IT and business information systems development. Earlier in his career, he led the adoption, architecture development, and expansion of open source relational database management systems at the J. Craig Venter Institute. At the Institute for Genomic Research at U.C. Berkeley, Hank published in bioinformatics projects in high-throughput cloning, global gene expression studies, and novel gene finding through comparative genomics. Hank is a computer scientist with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from U.C. Berkeley.