Archived Talks

University of Pittsburgh Department of Biomedical Informatics Colloquium

Speaker: Mark S. Roberts, MD, MPP
Associate Professor of Medicine, Health Policy and Management and Industrial Engineering
Chief, Section of Decision Sciences and Clinical Systems Modeling
Department of Medicine

Friday, March 23, 2007
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Room M-184 VALE [?]
200 Meyran Avenue

Title: “Virtual Clinical Trials: The Archimedes Model of Human Physiology and Disease”

Mathematical models of various types have been used for many years to assist in the understanding of human disease and physiology, and to provide system for predicting outcomes under different scenarios or settings. However, traditional decision analytic methods have been plagued with their inability to capture basic physiological relationships, and have typically relied on discrete time and/or discrete states to describe and model continuous human physiological processes. This talk describes the basic methodology and mathematical formalisms behind the creation of the Archimedes model, a continuous time, equation-based mathematical model of the physiologic processes that produce diabetes, lipid disorders and heart disease. The model has been extensively validated, and has demonstrated the ability to predict the outcomes of certain clinical trials prior to their completion by evaluating a similarly constructed virtual clinical trial. Uses of the model to predict the outcomes under various different scenarios to prevent and treat common disease will be reviewed.

Conflict of Interest: Dr. Roberts has been a paid consultant for Archimedes, Inc.

For more information: jcumm@cbmi.pitt.edu or 412.647.7113