Scientists from all over the world at USISTF workshop

FLORENCE, ITALY – The U.S-Israel Science and Technology Foundation, in partnership with the Florida International University, the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, and the Technion, convened an international science workshop that brought together an international assembly of medical and computer scientists focused on how to use knowledge mining and bioinformatics tools to advance personalized diagnostics and therapeutics. Sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the workshop was held on February 4th and 5th in Florence, Italy.
Participants included 40 medical and computer scientists representing the United States, Israel, Palestinian Territories, Canada, Italy, Turkey, the Netherlands and Germany.

The workshop’s four scientific sessions explored the policy implications of implementing personalized diagnostics based on big data analytics, the technological challenges in creating useable systems, the challenges using big data analytics to predict future health outcomes, and the needs of clinicians in utilizing decision support systems based on big data analytics.

Workshop highlights included a call-to-action for technological breakthroughs to fill the growing ‘translational white spaces’ among the many scientific and clinical disciplines throughout the personalized medicine cycle, up to end-user clinicians, patients, and consumers; business model innovation to accelerate the reduction of new discoveries to practice; and policies that facilitate both.

Ann Liebschutz, Executive Director of the USISTF, said, “This workshop embodies the mission of USISTF programs- we convene top scientists and industry leaders to chart a path forward, to move today’s emerging technologies to become tomorrow’s deployable solutions.”

The group is preparing to deliver the scientific proceedings of the workshop to the National Science Foundation and broader community, and expects to publish them as Springer Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science.