14 Business View - March 2015
Opening
Lines
Using health care data to its full potential will require
close collaboration among the leading health scienc-
es research at Pitt, world-class computer science and
machine learning at CMU, and the clinical care, exten-
sive patient data and commercialization expertise at
UPMC. The close proximity and world-leading talent
among these organizations provide the ideal setting to
transform all aspects of health care, not only in west-
ern Pennsylvania but around the world.
"The complementary strengths of the alliance's part-
ner institutions will allow us to re-imagine health care
for millions of people in our shared, data-driven world,"
said Subra Suresh, president of CMU. "Through this
collaboration, we will move more rapidly to immediate
prevention and remediation, further accelerate the de-
velopment of evidence-based medicine, and augment
disease-centered models with patient-centered mod-
els of care."
The new research centers at CMU and Pitt will be
funded over the next six years by UPMC and also will
benefit from several hundred million dollars in existing
research grants at all three institutions. They promise
to create what UPMC CEO Jeffrey Romoff calls an "in-
novation ecosystem" for health data in the region.
"We are unlocking the potential of data to tackle some
of our nation's biggest challenges: raising the qual-
ity and reducing the cost of health care. Not only will
this effort benefit patients, but it also will accelerate
Pittsburgh's revitalization," said Romoff. Corporate
partners and entrepreneurs from around the world will
want to be close to this health care data hub, he pre-
dicted, just as Google, Apple and Disney already have
space in or near Oakland to be close to CMU's and
Pitt's talented faculty and students.
The alliance will support applied research and com-
mercialization, along with basic foundational research
in medicine and computer science. "Through this part-
nership, our brilliant scientists at Pitt and CMU will
have unprecedented resources for turning their inno-
vative ideas into products and services that can truly
better the lives of patients and society," said Patrick
Gallagher, chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh.
"The knowledge created here will result in the spin-off
of many new companies and thousands of new jobs
over the next decade."
Initially, the Pittsburgh Health Data Alliance will in-
clude two research and development centers: the Cen-
ter for Machine Learning and Health (CMLH), led by
founding director Eric Xing, Ph.D., a CMU professor in
the Department of Machine Learning; and the Center
for Commercial Applications of Healthcare Data (CCA),
spearheaded by Michael Becich, M.D., Ph.D., chair of
the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Pitt. Sci-
entists from all three institutions will participate in the
work of each center.
The CMLH will work on challenging problems at the in-
tersections of health care and machine learning. Data
from sources as varied as electronic medical records,
genomic sequencing, insurance records and wearable
sensors will be utilized to directly improve health care.
For example, imagine a smartphone app that suggests
the single dietary change that will most improve your
health, based on your genetic makeup and medical
history. Or suppose a physician receives an automatic
alert when a patient enters the earliest stages of re-
jecting a transplanted organ and can react while the
condition is most easily treatable. The center will focus
on five areas: big health care data analytics; personal-
