Pioneering Ideas

FasterCures' Mid-Year Top 10 Watchlist

FasterCures gives us a mid-year blog check-in on its Top 10 trends to watch regarding breakthroughs in medical research.  Their number one slot talks about how donors can maximize "return on philanthropy," referencing the FasterCures Philanthropy Advisory Service that will launch this fall.  Pioneer supported this, along with Gates, to provide an investment-grade information marketplace that can guide the efficiency and productivity of (a) donors and (b) nonprofit disease research groups that rely on their support in the search for cures.

Other things to watch?  The need for more cutting-edge translational research to move findings on new therapies and approaches from the lab to the clinic more quickly.  Science 2.0, and crowd-sourcing new discoveries.  I was interested to learn that FasterCures will be posting an "ideation challenge" this fall through InnoCentive.  Comparative effective analysis.  EHRs and the "healthcare information superhighway.  And, new paths to breakthroughs that look beyond the standard clinical trial approach.  They give a nod to Archimedes and our support of ARCHeS, stating that, rather than depart from the gold standard of clinical trials, predictive models could "radically streamline the[ir] design and simulation".

We'll keep you posted on the launch of the Philanthropy Advisory Service.  In the meantime, anything else you'd add to their watchlist? 

Forge New PHR Frontiers with Project HealthDesign at 9/17 Forum

We hope you can join us September 17th in Washington, DC for "New Frontiers in Personal Health Records: A Report-Out from Project HealthDesign and Forum on Next-Generation PHRs."  Project HealthDesign and its grantees have been pushing the potential for personal health records (PHRs) and related technologies to help consumers take charge of their health like never before.  This free, one-day event will feature the grantee design teams, who will showcase the prototype PHR applications they have been developing over the past 18 months, along with experts discussing key issues in this space, including:

• ways that new PHR designs can enhance how people manage their health and coordinate their care in the course of their everyday lives;
• the most important policy questions that will shape this dynamic field;
• where health system and tech industry leaders see this field heading, and its potential for empowering consumers;
• the innovative possibilities that emerge when you involve end users in the design and development process from the start;
• functional requirements and common platform components developed by Project HealthDesign, and how they could have broad application across the PHR field;
• ethical, legal and social implications presented by next-generation PHRs, and more.

Speakers confirmed thus far in the lineup include:

• Colin Evans, President and CEO, Dossia
• Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, President and CEO, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
• Keith Toussaint, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft HealthVault
• Amy Tenderich, DiabetesMine blogger
• Carol Diamond, Managing Director of the Health Program, Markle Foundation
• Karen Bell, National Health Information Technology Coordinator, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology

The event is being held at the Westin Washington, D.C. City Center -- please e-mail Erica Garland or call 202-745-5119 to register.  We hope to see you there for what looks to be a day of fascinating discussion and exploration.

New Evidence Supports Re-Mission and Advances Games for Health

We have talked quite a bit about games for health and building the evidence to understand the health impact of video and computer games here on Pioneering Ideas. Given that, I wanted to share with you a new study published this week in the journal Pediatrics.

The study evaluated the impact of playing Re-Mission, a video game developed by HopeLab specifically for teens and young adults with cancer, on key behavioral and psychological factors associated with successful cancer treatment. For those of your not familiar with Re-Mission, the game allows players, primarily young cancer patients, to pilot a microscopic robot named Roxxi through the bodies of fictional cancer patients, blasting away cancer cells and battling the side-effects of cancer and cancer treatments.

The study, the largest health game study to date, found that participants who played Re-Mission maintained higher levels of chemotherapy in their blood and took their antibiotics more consistently than those in the control group. Re-Mission players also showed faster acquisition of cancer-related knowledge and an increased sense of control over cancer.

In a press release issued by HopeLab, Steve Cole, Ph.D., vice president of research and co-author of the article, said, “This study shows that a strategically designed video game can be a powerful new tool to enhance the impact of medical treatment by motivating healthy behavior in the patient.”

We couldn’t agree more and expect that the work of Pioneer’s national program, Health Games Research will help continue to build this body of research and inform and advance game development to improve health outcomes.