Virtualizing Health And Disease

Roland Piquepaille writes "In "'Dr. Data' Digitizes Medical Care," Karen Southwick says that "David Eddy's Archimedes software dares to turn human heartbeats into the ones and zeros of the digital age -- and, just maybe, the nation's healthcare system on its ear." It sounds pretty ambitious, so let's look at some details. David Eddy has built a complex software program he calls Archimedes, named for the ancient Greek mathematician who boasted he could move the world with a single lever. The software model, for the first time in medical history, uses mathematical algorithms and equations to translate the beat of a heart or the twitch of a muscle into the ones and zeros of the Digital Age, replicating in numbers the behavior of a disease and creating a "virtual reality" in which patients, providers and institutions interact as they would in the real world. Southwick also wrote a companion story, "How Archimedes Works," which gives more technical explanations about this software developed by the Biomathematics Unit of Kaiser Permanente's Care Management Institute. Check this column for a summary of these two articles."

Timeline of medical sims (etc)

[RobotWisdom]

Just last night I added Archimedes to my timeline [robotwisdom.com] of knowledge representation.

The timeline covers all domains, not just medical, but there's lots of related sims, and medical models going back to 800 BC.

tell me of these 'ones and zeroes' you speak of...

[avi33]

This intro doesn't really do the subject justice. Anybody with even an AOL email address can probably digest something a bit more technical than this...any reference to "virtual reality" pretty much gives it away. Here's a better one:

Archimedes lets researchers try different treatments or change the processes of care for a disease and then explore the effects. For the four diseases it models so far, Archimedes creates thousands of simulated "people" at risk of getting or who already have a condition. These "people," each with different characteristics, grow older, get diseases, interact with the healthcare system, and live with (or die of) their diseases in similar fashion to populations in the real world. "If you're looking at evaluating any kind of care management program with different protocols, you can program them into Archimedes and see what the results are in both outcomes and costs," explains Matt Stiefel, associate executive director of the Care Management Institute.

i'm not sure about the art angle,

[spiny]

>David Eddy's Archimedes software dares to turn human heartbeats into the ones and zeros of the digital age --

but could be useful as a new form of ID ? :)

if you loved...

[Hubert_Shrump]

...such classics as Sim City and Bureaucracy , then you'll love the riveting experience of building your own healthcare system!

Buffer Overflow?

[docbrown42]

So, does that mean that if I look pr0n, my heart will beat faster and cause a buffer overflow?

Re:Buffer Overflow?

[jtheory]

So, does that mean that if I look at pr0n, my heart will beat faster and cause a buffer overflow?

Hm. No, sir... the software's running fine; you must have overflowed a buffer in one of your "physical" systems.

I'll buzz the nurse and she can bring you a new hospital gown.