Transforming for Digital Medicine

The “Transforming for Digital Medicine” (TFDM) group will create a series of thought-leadership whitepapers on key topics for creating a patient-centric digital transformation that optimally protects and serves the interests of patients. The group will collaborate with various public and private organizations, including leading digital medicine organizations.

The potential impact of Digital Medicine is enormous and is advancing new interfaces between traditional medicine, technology, and engineering. Health data can now be collated in the Cloud and precision analytics can offer insights into the human body not possible before. This technology has the potential to solve massive current problems in our healthcare systems, such as high rates of diagnostic error as well as launch a leap forward for precision diagnostics for far earlier detection of disease and precision treatment choices personalized for each patient. New Cloud, Big Data, and “AI” technologies are a new frontier for medicine that are poised to propel a future of precision medicine and value-based care.

The potential economic power of the health data needed to power new Digital Medicine technologies is also massive. It now represents a $7.2 trillion dollar worldwide market and a $3.5 trillion US market. In many areas of the world, there is felt to be overrepresentation of industry on topics of ethical use of patient data. The impact of this imbalance is a misalignment of stakeholder interests with patient data being used in ways not in the interests of patients and healthcare providers. It is impeding the potential impact of new Digital Medicine technology for patients. The TFDM group seeks to “level the playing field” for all stakeholders in this important conversation on how to create an optimal ecosystem to serve the potential benefits for each individual patient, and thus global public health and society at large.

Given the demonstrated excellence of IEEE in successful participatory design systems and process, the TFDM group feels the IEEE is the perfect “anchor” upon which to build participation amongst multiple external and newer organizations around topics of Digital Medicine and Health Data. This creates the perfect conduit for creation of respected and credible global intellectual content on the topic of positive transformation for Digital Medicine and global economics to foster better alignment between the various stakeholders’ interests and goals.

The goal of this consortium is to use a participatory design process to assist in the development of whitepapers on the general topic of creation of an optimal patient-centric technology ecosystem for the evolution of Digital Medicine technology.

Proposed deliverables and outcomes from this Industry Connections activity include whitepapers, prototypes, templates, and proposals for standards.

We welcome the healthcare industry and other interested participants from corporations, academia, industry, and government agencies. Healthcare industry members will include but are not limited to:

• Machine vendors
• Pharmaceutical companies
• Electronic health record companies

To learn more about the program and how to join the Transforming for Digital Medicine activity, please express your interest by sending an inquiry to the activity chair whose information can be found in the Contacts section.