Information management to enable personalized medicine: stakeholder roles in building clinical decision support.

BACKGROUND: Advances in technology and the scientific understanding of disease processes are presenting new opportunities to improve health through individualized approaches to patient management referred to as personalized medicine. Future health care strategies that deploy genomic technologies and molecular therapies will bring opportunities to prevent, predict, and pre-empt disease processes but will be dependent on knowledge management capabilities for health care providers that are not currently available. A key cornerstone to the potential application of this knowledge will be effective use of electronic health records. In particular, appropriate clinical use of genomic test results and molecularly-targeted therapies present important challenges in patient management that can be effectively addressed using electronic clinical decision support technologies. DISCUSSION: Approaches to shaping future health information needs for personalized medicine were undertaken by a work group of the American Health Information Community. A needs assessment for clinical decision support in electronic health record systems to support personalized medical practices was conducted to guide health future development activities. Further, a suggested action plan was developed for government, researchers and research institutions, developers of electronic information tools (including clinical guidelines, and quality measures), and standards development organizations to meet the needs for personalized approaches to medical practice. In this article, we focus these activities on stakeholder organizations as an operational framework to help identify and coordinate needs and opportunities for clinical decision support tools to enable personalized medicine. SUMMARY: This perspective addresses conceptual approaches that can be undertaken to develop and apply clinical decision support in electronic health record systems to achieve personalized medical care. In addition, to represent meaningful benefits to personalized decision-making, a comparison of current and future applications of clinical decision support to enable individualized medical treatment plans is presented. If clinical decision support tools are to impact outcomes in a clear and positive manner, their development and deployment must therefore consider the needs of the providers, including specific practice needs, information workflow, and practice environment.

New standards and enhanced utility for family health history information in the electronic health record: an update from the American Health Information Community's Family Health History Multi-Stakeholder Workgroup.

Family health history is a complex, multifaceted tool for assessing disease risk that can offer insight into the interplay between inherited and social factors relevant to patient care. Family health history tools in electronic health records can enable the user to collect, represent, and interpret structured data that properly supports clinical decisions. If these data can be made interoperable, important health information can be shared with minimal duplication of effort among entities involved in the continuum of patient care. This paper reviews the efforts by the American Health Information Community's Family Health History Multi-Stakeholder Workgroup to create a core data set for family health history information and to determine requirements to promote incorporation of such information in electronic health records. The Workgroup is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Personalized Health Care Initiative.

Advancing personalized health care through health information technology: an update from the American Health Information Community's Personalized Health Care Workgroup.

The Personalized Health Care Workgroup of the American Health Information Community was formed to determine what is needed to promote standard reporting and incorporation of medical genetic/genomic tests and family health history data in electronic health records. The Workgroup has examined and clarified a range of issues related to this information, including interoperability standards and requirements for confidentiality, privacy, and security, in the course of developing recommendations to facilitate its capture, storage, transmission, and use in clinical decision support. The Workgroup is one of several appointed by the American Health Information Community to study high-priority issues related to the implementation of interoperable electronic health records in the United States. It is also a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Personalized Health Care Initiative, which is designed to create a foundation upon which information technology that supports personalized, predictive, and pre-emptive health care can be built.

Cleavable hydrophilic linker for one-bead-one-compound sequencing of oligomer libraries by tandem mass spectrometry.

We have developed a method for the rapid and unambiguous identification of sequences of hit compounds from one-bead-one-compound combinatorial libraries of peptide and peptoid ligands. The approach uses a cleavable linker that is hydrophilic to help reduce nonspecific binding to biological samples and allows for the attachment of a halogen tag, which greatly facilitates post-screening sequencing by tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS). The linker is based on a tartaric acid unit, which, upon cleavage from resin, generates a C-terminal aldehyde. This aldehyde can then be derivatized with a bromine-containing amino-oxy compound that serves as an isotope tag for subsequent MS/MS analysis of y-ion fragments. We have applied this linker and method to the syntheses of a number of peptoids that vary in sequence and length and have also demonstrated single-bead sequencing of a peptoid pentamer. The linker is also shown to have very low levels of nonspecific binding to proteins.

A rapid and general method for the asymmetric synthesis of 2-substituted pyrrolidines using tert-butanesulfinamide.

A new method for the asymmetric synthesis of 2-substituted pyrrolidines in three steps from commercially available starting materials is described. Addition of the Grignard reagent prepared from 2-(2-bromoethyl)-1,3-dioxane to N-tert-butanesulfinyl aldimines proceeds in high yields and with good diastereoselectivities. The sulfinamide products are then cleanly converted into pyrrolidines in one step.

Potent 4-aminopiperidine based antimalarial agents.

A series of compounds with potent activity against a multi-drug-resistant strain of Plasmodium falciparum, the causative agent of the deadliest strain of malaria, is described. These compounds were also tested for cytotoxicity in human foreskin fibroblast assays, evaluated to determine their logD, and assayed for metabolism by human and murine hepatocytes. This work resulted in the development of compounds 9e and 10d, which showed good potency (IC(50)=75 nM and <60 nM, respectively, against Dd2), acceptable logD values, and reasonable metabolic stability.

Novel and potent anti-malarial agents.

Readily accessible, novel, and potent anti-malarial compounds have been developed. Optimization of the initial lead structure resulted in derivatives with IC50 values from 7 to 35 nM against chloroquine-sensitive and 70-350 nM against chloroquine-resistant strains of Plasmodium falciparum.