Before the meeting began, the Governor learned about the latest R&D at ITMO University, St. Petersburg Polytechnical Universityand Saint-Petersburg Electrotechnical University “LETI”. Kseniya Mukhina, a second year masters student from ITMO U's Chair of High Performance Computing,did a presentation about a decision support system developed at ITMO and used by the Center of Translational Medicine. She demonstrated an anatomy app that helps to study the make-up of the human body and can be used to model different crisis situations, for example, the formation of blood clots.Ms.Mukhina also talked about optimising ambulance route system to bring patients to the nearest hospitals as soon as possible.General Director of the Almazov Research Center, Evgeniya Shlyakhto, noted that this system is already in effect through collaboration with Yandex.
"One of the key objectives of the Council is to develop joint solutions to effectively use the intellectual potential of the Northern Capital," said Governor Poltavechnko in his opening statement. Medical research is a priority. Recetly the city signed an agreement with the Almazov Center to establish a research cluster "Translational Medicine" with participation of the leading St. Petersburg universities. It will both train new specialists and develop new medical devices and technologies by bringing together various areas of research, from IT to medicine to biology and chemistry. It will help the city gain the leading positions in translational medicine.
According to Mr. Shljakhto, St. Petersburg is already doing well compared to other regions in implementing remote diagnostics and is moving towards telemedicine through collaboration with the Healthcare Council and the Almazov Center.
The experts noted that medicine can't develop without cross-sectoral cooperation and cited the partnership between ITMO University and Univeresity of Amsterdam as an example.
"Our R&D in IT in Healthcare is still brand new as our collaboration with the Almazov Center only kicked off last year," said Aleksander Bukhanovsky, head of ITMO's High Performance Computing Chair. "This topic in connection with the development of electronic services in medicine is extremely relevant and discussed today. The more information systems working in the health system, the more data that must be processed. BigData requires connecting data and developing the process of extracting knowledge based on the external environment. Here it's not always the technologies that we're accustomed to prove the most effective. It's necessary the knowledge extracted from the BigData becomes the basis of the basis of decision support systems on different levels: what to do, when, how and why. One of the challenges of BigData is finding that golden nugget. "
To date, the Department's solutions concern the data of over 70,000 outpatients, who for several years have been treated for hypertension. Analysis of the information gathered helps doctors make teatment decisions. Another level of use of new technologies - the support and decision-making in the management of patients with more acute conditions. It includes predicting the length of the patient stay in the hospital and outpatient care. The next level of application of this simulation - epidemiology, forecasting epidemics of influenza, as well as the spread of HIV and AIDS. To handle this kind of complex systems, microsimulation examines the movement of people in the city.
Following the meeting, council members decided to create a joint working group on the development of medical equipment, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology in St. Petersburg. At the same time officials and industrialists have agreed to start working on implementing the new system for training health workers.
