MILWAUKEE, May 24 (AScribe Newswire) -- Instead of giving Superman X-ray vision, David Klemer, associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), says the superhero would be better off with "near IR imaging ability" because it can probe more deeply.
Some of Klemer's research involves optical imaging at near-infrared wavelengths, using materials that fluoresce to signal changes in tissue at the molecular level. He says there's plenty of room for development of new imaging technology along the electromagnetic spectrum.
UWM Chancellor Carlos Santiago and T. Michael Bolger, president of the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), agree. The two universities have spearheaded a new biomedical research institute that will produce research to help boost the state's knowledge-based economy and improve patient care at the same time.
The Wisconsin Institute for Biomedical Health Technology (WIBHT), housed at UWM, will champion research from industry and academia at the frontiers of inquiry in biomedical engineering, health care informatics, and clinical research on patient outcomes and treatment efficacy.
The institute's areas of research represent economic and intellectual strengths in southeastern Wisconsin, says Santiago. And it links UWM and the Medical College with GE Healthcare Technologies, Aurora Healthcare System, and the Cerner Corporation.
Backed by a $1 million seed grant from UWM, the institute will involve five UWM schools and colleges and include nearly 65 researchers from UWM and MCW.
The seed money will be used primarily to attract a world-class director and his or her research team to UWM.
Based on preliminary discussions among the partners, University officials estimate the value of private sector and federal support for the institute at $15 million in the first three years. It will be housed initially at the Cozzens & Cudahy Research Center, currently home to UWM's Milwaukee Industrial Innovation Center.
"By creating an environment in which our faculty and academic researchers can work alongside experts from industry," said Santiago, "we will speed up the transfer of new technology into the hospitals, clinics and treatment centers where health is improved and lives are saved."
In addition to investigating new medical imaging technologies, the institute will focus on finding ways to manage the sea of information that new technology generates and to design IT systems that will provide that data in more useful and accessible forms, while also ensuring privacy.
Medical imaging has improved so much in the last decade that the number of pictures a health care professional gets from a typical brain CT scan is more than 2,200. That's a lot of pictures to retrieve and look at.
It illustrates what health care professionals are up against as the amount of new knowledge created by technology outpaces the ability of practitioners to shuffle, analyze and share the data in a timely manner.
The same problem exists in managing patient records (medical informatics).
Research is expected to center on system integration, changing the basic structure of a medical IT system from a transaction model to one based on electronic searching or aggregation of data.
But it also will contribute to intelligent clinical documentation systems - computer programs that could offer quick access to best practices for specific illnesses. Another avenue of inquiry is intelligent human maintenance systems (bioprognostics), which are models that can predict the progression of a disease in an individual.
Aurora Health Care, nationally recognized for efforts to improve the quality of health care, has a long history of collaboration with UWM.
The company will support the institute in the area of nursing informatics, in which UWM, Aurora and the Cerner Corporation, a health care information technology company based in Kansas City, Mo., have been involved since last year, said Susan Ela, senior clinical vice president for Aurora.
The project uses Cerner technology at Aurora health facilities to capture patient information so that the UWM College of Nursing can suggest improvements that will promote best practices and reduce costs.
The institute also will investigate new medical imaging technology with some projects being done in concert with GE Healthcare.
Adding the commercialization component to the Institute is TechStar, a Southeastern Wisconsin technology transfer organization. Already, TechStar has successfully helped launch eight companies that grew out of such research; examples include NovaScan (UWM) and Neurognostics (MCW).
"NovaScan and Neurognostics are good examples of what can happen when a single faculty member joins forces with TechStar to create a new company," said Santiago. "With the WIBHT, we could ramp that up exponentially by building a critical mass of targeted resources in the region. That's the point of the institute."
Other goals of the institute include:
- Provide educational training opportunities in cross-disciplinary areas of engineering, physics, medicine, nursing, health sciences and business.
- Develop intellectual property that can translate into the creation of new jobs and businesses through commercialization.
- Expand collaborative graduate degree programs.
- Serve as a model for academic/industry partnerships.
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CONTACTS:
Carlos Santiago, UWM: 414-229-5024 or 229-4035
T. Michael Bolger, MCW: 414-456-8225
Ed Howe, Aurora Health Care: 414-647-3022
Charlotte Weaver, Cerner Corporation: 816-885-3029 or 816-885-1304
Brian McKaig, GE Healthcare Technologies: 262-544-3937
Dr. David Klemer, M.D., UWM: 414-229-2228, dklemer@uwm.edu
Sally Lundeen, dean, UWM School of Nursing, 414-229-4189,
slundeen@uwm.edu
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