Computational Medicine Begins to Enhance the Way Doctors Detect and Treat Disease

by Phil Sneiderman, Johns Hopkins University

Computational medicine, a fast-growing method of using computer models and sophisticated software to figure out how disease develops–and how to thwart it–has begun to leap off the drawing board and land in the hands of doctors who treat patients for heart ailments, cancer and other illnesses. Using digital tools, researchers have begun to use experimental and clinical data to build models that can unravel complex medical mysteries. The technique enables researchers to offer a new perspective to medical diagnosis and treatment, says institute director Raimond Winslow, at the Johns Hopkins University Institute of Computational Medicine.

A new review of the field is published in the Oct. 31 issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine. The article, “Computational Medicine: Translating Models to Clinical Care,” was written by four Johns Hopkins professors. 

Biology in both health and disease is very complex, Winslow added. It involves the feed-forward flow of information from the level of the gene to protein, networks, cells, organs and organ systems. This is already complex, he said, and to make matters even more difficult, it also involves feed-back pathways by which, for example, proteins, mechanical forces at the level of tissues and organs, and environmental factors regulate function at lower levels such as the gene.

“Computational medicine can help you see how the pieces of the puzzle fit together to give a more holistic picture,” Winslow says. He says the computational models help to understand the complex interactions involved in disease mechanisms, aid in diagnosis, and test the effectiveness of different therapies.

For example, advanced mathematical models enable researchers to better understand how networks of molecules are implicated in cancer. Computational physiological medicine involves using computer models to examine how biological systems change over time from a healthy to an unhealthy state. Computational anatomy uses medical images to detect changes in the shape of various structures in the brain. “Computational medicine will continue to grow as a discipline because it is providing a new quantitative approach to understanding, detecting, and treating disease at the level of the individual,” Winslow says.  Article

DCL: I would bet they are doing some CEP in running their disease models to test hypotheses.