The third revolution in medicine-the convergence of life sciences with physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering [from the guest editors]

TY - JOUR

T1 - The third revolution in medicine-the convergence of life sciences with physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering [from the guest editors]

AU - Chang, Joseph

AU - Wong, Stephen

AU - Newcomb, Robert

AU - Hafliger, Philipp

N1 - Funding Information: This special issue was first mooted at the 2011 IEEE-NIH LiSSA (IEEE-National Institutes of Health Life Sciences Systems and Applications) workshop—the only (series of) IEEE-related workshop(s) that is held within the NIH campus in Bethesda; we will later articulate why it is important for an IEEE-type workshop to be held in the NIH campus. This objective of the workshop is true to the Third Revolution in Medicine—an initiative supported by NIH through a conference grant to Prof. Stephen Wong, one of the guest editors and a member of the LiSSA technical committee, to facilitate dialogue between engineering (IEEE) and biomedical/ life sciences communities—to encourage symbiotic multi-disciplinary research between the two diverse communities. This is perhaps the ‘perfect match’ between the engineering technology push and clinical pull—a ‘sweet spot.’ We are very pleased that this special issue embodies five highly readable, interesting, and diverse articles. The first article, entitled “Opportunities in the Life Sciences” is authored by Mathukumalli Vidyasagar (Sagar), the inaugural chair of the IEEE Life Science Committee. In this article, Sagar informs that the IEEE is fully cognizant that the first half of the 21st century belongs to Biology, perhaps exemplified by the fact that NIH’s funding is $32B versus NSF’s (National Science Foundation) $6.9B—nearly 5x (or in engineering terms, a substantial ~14 dB higher)! Also, as the academic life sciences community is much larger than the academic electrical engineering community, he urges “…the imperative for EEs to reach out to life scientists is larger than the other way around…”—the reason why the IEEE-NIH LiSSA workshops are held on the NIH campus. IEEE is, in some sense, indeed active with as many as 30 technical committees (the CAS society has the BioCAS and the LiSSA technical committees, and organizes the LiSSA workshop, BioCAS conference and the CASME (CAS Medical and Environmental) workshop) dealing with life sciences-related matters. Sagar concludes his article with a message for us (IEEE members), “…the EE community has to go more than 50% down the road in order to establish links with the life sciences community” and encourages us with “…the returns would be well worth the effort.” The second article entitled, “Promoting Innovation and Convergence in Military Medicine,” is authored by Warren Grundfest, Eva Lai, Charles Peterson and Karl Friedl from TATRC (Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center), USA. The aforesaid authors, with a good mix of PhDs and MDs, articulate that ‘traditional’ research centers that operate within accepted processes and conventions are largely incompatible with innovations that tend to occur in less constrained, less conventional, and less risk-adverse environments; within our EE fraternity, we could perhaps ask, “Does this resemble EE research centers?” Put differently, the management objective at TATRC is to advocate and accelerate technology development and ensure beneficial implementation in the shortest time. The authors explain how TATRC accomplishes this through integrating multidisciplinary teams that combine engineering technology and physical sciences with both basic and applied clinical biosciences to solve medical problems— congruous with the Third Revolution of Medicine.

PY - 2012

Y1 - 2012

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84865523062&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84865523062&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1109/MCAS.2012.2206989

DO - 10.1109/MCAS.2012.2206989

M3 - Editorial

AN - SCOPUS:84865523062

SN - 1531-636X

VL - 12

SP - 4

EP - 7

JO - IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine

JF - IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine

IS - 3

M1 - 6279603

ER -