NCI Washington Visit goes well!

Hi everybody, just resurfacing after my three weeks away.

Just to let you know it was a very successful trip with lots of new contacts and information that will help the BCI in the future.

My lecture in Washington at the National Cancer Institute on “Breast Conservation, Have We Gone Too Far?” was very well received. I met with multiple researchers and given a lot of opportuinities for collaboration.

It was great to meet with Kathy Cronin and Andrew Friedman. I have been doing research with them for two years but we have never met in person. The BCI was invited by the NCI to do some research on US data on the impact of changing use of HRT on the incidence of breast cancer in the USA.

Shown here is a picture of a three-hour brainstorming session on our second paper on the variation of breast cancer incidence by Race and HRT. The team really "clicked" over the phone over the past two years and well and truly “clicked” in person and I am sure lots of projects will follow and hopefully funding. Kathy, Andrew and their assistant Nadia are some of the world's best statisticians and have published widely on breast cancer risk and prognostic factors.

By the way, Andrew is responsible for all the Cancer Risk calculators on the NCI Web and he said "The BCI's breast cancer calculator is the best I've seen". If you haven't seen it go to www.seemyrisk.com

As you can imagine I was on top of the world after this two-day "intensive". More updates soon with a formal lecture at a tumour board shortly.

Dragons abreast (DA) Hospital Challenge

The big boat race is coming up fast. Thanks to Liz and all her merry crew for taking part in this year's challenge. I'll be commentating again this year with Michelle Hanton, the DA national co-ordinator. Here's a photo from last year!

For more information see:

http://www.dragonsabreast.com.au/

E-mail tips

This came across my desk today

E-mail tips

Meeting with top US Microsoft Executive

On Thursday the 6th of December, Steven Boyages and I were invited by Microsoft Australia to meet Steve Shihadeh, General Manager of Health Solutions Group, Microsoft Corporation.

We discussed strategies for Westmead Hospital and the BCI and how seemyrisk.com could be integrated with MSN. A further meetuing is planned in the US in late February.

As general manager in sales, marketing and solutions for Microsoft’s Health Solutions Group, Steve Shihadeh is responsible for Microsoft’s worldwide go-to-market strategy, sales, services and customer relationships. The Health Solutions Group is focused on becoming a leading provider of health solutions to health enterprises and consumers alike.

Shihadeh brings more than 25 years of broad experience and success in healthcare sales, marketing and management. In his previous role as GM for Microsoft Health & Life Sciences he led his team to recognition as the company’s top Industry subsidiary. Before joining Microsoft in 2003, Shihadeh led the North American sales and services as Senior Vice President of Sales at Siemens Medical Solutions.

Microsoft Health Solutions Group is a business unit of Microsoft focused on developing specific solutions for Healthcare. We continue to develop solutions for both the enterprise and consumer. Currently HSG comprises:

Azyxxi http://www.azyxxi.com

Azyxxi is a new way to capture, store and present information. It overcomes one of the key issues for delivering efficient healthcare – fast access to all data at the point of care. At Washington Hospital Center they estimated that 60% of a physician’s time is taken up by searching for information. By implementing the Azyxxi solution they drastically increased ED throughput, reduced waiting times, and improved patient satisfaction from one of the lowest to one of the highest nationwide.

Without replacing any current systems, Azyxxi brings together patient data from hundreds of different sources in real time. Azyxxi is an enterprise platform that allows you to roll up patient-centric, financial and operational data into one unified database. The data is stored for fast access times (typically less than 1/8th second) and is presented in end-user customisable views. Healthcare clinicians, administrators, researchers and others can get efficient access to information to help turn data into information and enable decision making.

This could be very helpful for BreastScreen data.

HealthVault http://www.healthvault.com

A free consumer personal health platform to collect, store, and share your health information. The record includes medications, medical images, lab results, health plan, scanned documents, and data uploads from medical devices. Another aspect of the platform is to enable you to perform searches on validated health content and store these results.

Global Care Solutions http://www.hospital2000.com

In October 2007 Microsoft announced the acquisition of Global Care Solutions. The software suite comprises a fully integrated hospital information system and Radiology RIS/PACS complete with image archiving, patient and bed management, laboratory, pharmacy, radiology, pathology, financial accounting, materials management and HR systems. The system was developed at Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok, one of the most advanced hospitals in Asia, and comprises their entire hospital information system.

HRT calculator seemyrisk.com launched