Date: November 04, 2009 Time: (All day)
Location:
Contact:
Event Type: Lecture
Dr. Tonellato presents a general approach, mathematical model and computational method to predict clinical efficacy of genetic discoveries using 'clinical avatars' to conduct simulations of the effect of genotypes on risk, diagnosis and treatment. Clinical avatars are individual medical data records produced from a stochastic model and statistical parameters developed to reflect actual patient populations. The approach is used to detect differences between predictions of two warfarin dosing prediction algorithms applied to several representative patient populations (US general, African American, Asian). Clinical variables (clinical, prescription, and genetic) used in the model were derived from examination of published warfarin prediction and decision support algorithms. Clinical avatars are then produced with variables and population means, variances and dependencies consistent with those found in the literature. Simulations demonstrate strengths and weaknesses of the dosing algorithms depend on population characteristics, size and genetic frequencies. All modeling, computations and simulations are conducted on our cloud computing environment. Examples of the strategy, methods, and simulations in other areas of personalized medicine such as cancer risk prediction will be discussed.
Peter Tonellato joined the Center for Biomedical Informatics (CBMI) at Harvard Medical School in 2007 after completing a stint as CEO of POINTONE Systems, the personalized medicine software company he founded in 2001. Previous to POINTONE, Dr. Tonellato was Associate Professor of Mathematics at Marquette University (MU) and then Founding Director of the Bioinformatics Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), 1997-2004 and of the joint MU-MCW graduate program in bioinformatics. At CBMI, Dr. Tonellato created the Laboratory for Personalized Medicine to focus on research, development, and translation of clinical, physiological, and genetic knowledge to the benefit of health care. Dr. Tonellato has worked in the area of biomathematics, computational biology, and biomedical informatics since completing his degree in applied mathematics at the University of Arizona in 1985.