Marzieh Ghiasi

April 25^th is a rather interesting and historically eventful day. Today is DNA Day, commemorating the 1953 publication of James D. Watson and Francis Crick’s article elucidating the structure of DNA. Today is also the 7th anniversary of the completion of the ambitious Human Genome Project, which while in itself a monumental accomplishment, will be instrumental to the next great leap in the biological sciences.

Global malaria endemicity via Global Malaria Partnership.

World Malaria Day, takes place today in recognition of malaria, a preventable infection that is endemic to 109 countries, leading to as many as 250 million infections each year and one million deaths each year. As with the Neglected Tropical Diseases, which also put two billion at risk, those who are most likely to die from malaria are already the most vulnerable in world, their condition exacerbated by the social and economic burden of these diseases. As I posted in @ntds earlier today “No man is an island… we global advocates must work together to eradicate HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Malaria, and Neglected Tropical Diseases.” I am an advocate of the vast yet concentrated efforts used to eradicate smallpox, but at the same time, I believe that today, given the knowledge and tools available, we are capable of a much more contextualized response. In my view, given the interplay between these four diseases, tackling one without a comprehensive and coordinated strategy to tackle the others is akin to containing a leaking dam with a finger. It’s not going to be effective over the long term.

I love examining how great transformations occur, and I think in order to eradicate the the ‘Big Four’ infectious diseases that scourge our world, we need a great transformation in how we approach these infections, integrated strategies (as advocated by GNNTD) and revolutionary thinking.

Continue to part 2 »

http://www.mcgilldaily.com/articles/20738

Diagnosis gone digital
By Marzieh Ghiasi
Monday, October 5th, 2009

Almost every field has adopted digital technology, and medicine is no exception. However, the transformation of health informatics in the past decade has not simply been a change in tools of the trade, but a change in the very way knowledge is acquired and applied.

13th century Anatomical Illustration | Source

As a discipline that brings together health care and information science, health informatics is involved in setting up resources like search engines that doctors can use to retrieve clinical data. These tools can be grouped into two categories – information retrieval systems (IRS) and clinical decision support systems (CDSS).

Pierre Pluye, a physician and associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine at McGill University, investigates these electronic resources. He explained how IRS provide a way to filter the staggering amount of available information down to only the most relevant.

“There are 19 million abstracts on Medline [an online biomedical database]. Physicians do not have time [to read every single one]… because basically you would have to read 24 hours a day, seven days a week just to keep updated,” said Pluye.

CDSS differ from IRS in that they provide patient-specific information. Clinicians can use calculator-type programs that look at a patient’s history to determine their likelihood of contracting diseases or experiencing medical complications.
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