LapaRobot developed by UCLA.

UCLA surgeon Erik Dutson (left) and engineering researcher Chris Lim adjust the master controls of the robot, which was developed at UCLA's engineering school.

A UCLA team of doctors and engineers has developed a new robot to help provide hands-on instruction to novice surgeons in minimally invasive surgical techniques — even if teacher and student are miles apart.

Using dual controls similar to those used in a driver’s education car, Dr. Erik Dutson, a surgeon with UCLA’s Center for Advanced Surgical and Interventional Technology (CASIT), manned a master console to guide novices over the Internet as they took turns using a duplicate set of surgical tools. The center is part of the David Geffen School of Medicine.

During exercises to help them develop dexterity with the tools, novices practiced picking up rubber beads, tying a knot similar to those used in suturing and cutting out a cloth circle to simulate snipping tissue. Successful execution of such tasks is part of the certification process for surgical training.

Rather than picking up a scalpel, surgeons are now doing many procedures by using joystick-like controls that manipulate surgical instruments inserted through tiny, keyhole-size incisions. These newer techniques are popular because they provide a shorter recovery time for the patient, reduced pain and trauma, and a greater range of motion and access for the surgeon.

But as the demand for these new techniques grows, so does the need for more effective ways to teach these skills.

The remote robotic teaching system is one of the first to be developed to help surgeons feel resistance to bone and tissue as if they were operating inside the body, Dutson said. Even though he was miles away, Dutson could take over the controls and increase or relax the resistance that the trainee encounterd while performing the tasks. The trainee and Dutson talked to each other via a Skype-like interface on a monitor set up next to the robot platform. The robot also utilizes standard laparoscopic tools surgeons use  in the operating room.

Called the LapaRobot, the new system was developed by a faculty member and researchers from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science in collaboration with the medical school. Professor and department chair Tsu-Chin Tsao conceived of the system, which was then designed and built by engineering researchers Stephen Prince and Chris Lim, with the help of colleagues Chris Kang and  Kevin Chu. All are from UCLA’s Mechatronics and Controls Laboratory.

“These remote applications greatly broaden teaching and training capabilities,” said Dutson, CASIT’s executive medical director and associate clinical professor of surgery. Combat surgeons working on the battlefield as well as physicians in rural areas of the country or in third-world countries may someday be learning these skills remotely. “Telehealth is going to play a major role in the future of health care delivery,” he said.

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Former chair of UC Davis Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine was 78.

E. Morton Bradbury, former chair and professor emeritus of the UC Davis Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, died after a short illness on Jan. 5 at St. Vincent Hospital in Santa Fe, N.M. He was in the presence of his family.

Bradbury was born on May 25, 1933, in Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom. He obtained a Ph.D. in 1958 from King’s College, University of London. His academic appointments until his retirement in 2007 included head of the department of molecular biology in Portsmouth Polytechnic, departmental chair of biological sciences at UC Davis, and life sciences division director at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Bradbury was a pioneering scientist, exceptionally diverse and successful in the field of chromatin structure and modification, neutron diffraction and NMR. He mentored 100 students and postdocs, published more than 300 papers, co-authored a book and was the recipient of numerous prizes. He lectured worldwide, including at the Nobel Ceremony, and at the Pope’s Vatican Symposium celebrating 350 years of the publication of Galileo’s treatise on the Copernican theory. Beyond his scientific accomplishments, Bradbury was known for his humanity and his equal treatment of everyone, be they students, janitors or directors.

As a husband, father, grandfather and friend, Bradbury was, without exception, a loving, respectful, caring and unconventional man, touching all those who met him with his respect and unassuming nature. In later years, he became a passionate collector and expert in African art, befriending the many traders he met, some becoming his close friends. His African collection became a life’s work.

Morton is survived by his beloved wife of 54 years, Antonija; his four children, Andrew, Mala, Vlado and Erna; his daughter-in-law Ilia; his eight grandchildren, Stephanie, Dillon, Aidan, Owen, Maya, Anya, Zoe and Odette; and his cat, Starbright.

A private service celebrating Bradbury’s life was held in Santa Fe. The family requests that donations be sent to the nonprofit organization Coming Home Connection or Save The Children.

UC San Diego’s Sandra Daley awarded federal grant for Health Careers Opportunity Program.

Sandra Daley, UC San Diego

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently awarded $742,222 to UC San Diego’s Dr. Sandra Daley, professor of pediatrics and director of the Comprehensive Research Center in Health Disparities, to fund the Health Careers Opportunity Program, San Diego Regional Consortium (HCOP/SDRC). The program is designed to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds develop the skills needed to successfully compete, enter and graduate from health professions schools. HCOP/SDRC was one of just 14 programs in the nation to receive funding.

“UC San Diego is committed to providing students of all backgrounds with the tools and resources they need to be successful in their educational endeavors,” said Daley. “This grant supports our mission by funding programs that will help disadvantaged students in San Diego pursue their dreams of becoming doctors, nurses and other health professionals, and thereby ensure a strong and diverse health care workforce for our nation’s future.”

HCOP/SDRC works to build an educational pipeline of students on track to enter the health sciences field by offering a variety of academic enrichment programs, beginning in middle school and continuing through professional school, for students who otherwise might not have access. UC San Diego partners with schools in the San Diego Unified and Sweetwater school districts, and community colleges throughout San Diego and Imperial counties to provide students with mentoring programs, lab activities, workshops, hands-on research training and other support services that enhance student education. To date, more than 1,500 students have gone through these programs.

“A lot of underserved students have a tremendous amount of potential, but lack role models,” said Aldo Rodriguez, a third-year student at the UC San Diego School of Medicine and counselor for HCOP’s UniversityLink Medical Science Program (ULMSP). A summer program for community college students from disadvantaged backgrounds, ULMSP provides four weeks of rigorous academic training, including writing and science classes, combined with mentoring and networking opportunities.

“These programs bring together mentors, resources and networking — tools for success that more affluent students typically already have access to. It helps to level the playing field,” Rodriguez continued.

Originally from Fresno, Rodriguez recalls experiencing many of the same educational challenges as the students he mentors today. In high school, Rodriguez participated in college prep programs that connected him with mentors, networking, academic resources and other opportunities that helped him get accepted — and succeed — at UC Berkeley.

“When you have mentors with a similar background as you, it helps you to really see what’s possible,” he said. “I’ve seen definite improvements in all of the students I work with in ULMSP. Many who initially just wanted a four-year degree leave the program with a goal to pursue medical school or another type of professional school. As they go through the program, they discover what they’re really capable of.”

The Health Careers Opportunity Program, San Diego Regional Consortium (HCOP/SDRC) is a partnership between the UC San Diego School of Medicine, the San Diego State University Pre-College Institute, the Scripps San Diego Border Area Health Education Center, nine community colleges participating in the UC San Diego “UniversityLink” Transfer Student Guarantee Program and 12 of their “feeder” middle and high schools in inner city, border, east suburban and rural communities. HCOP was established in 2004 and is one of two Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) academic enrichment programs conducted at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. The other is the Hispanic Center of Excellence, established in 1993.

For more information about initiatives that enhance the UC San Diego campus and support a diverse community, visit http://giving.ucsd.edu/diversity.

School of Medicine retreat focuses on applications in research, patient care and education.

(From left) Joseph DeRisi, Clay Johnston, Sam Hawgood, UC San Francisco

In the world of bioinformatics, the rush is on to extract gold from a data mine.

The amount of data that health care providers and scientists collect from patients and research participants is growing explosively. This information ranges from the genetic to laboratory tests and imaging exams, to medical histories and information about treatment and outcomes — and in some cases to survey data on large populations.

This deluge of data and the bioinformatics capabilities necessary to take advantage of it were the focus of this year’s daylong UC San Francisco School of Medicine leadership retreat on Jan. 20. In his welcome address, Dean Sam Hawgood, M.B.B.S., outlined his goal for the day — to engage campus leaders in the question of how to optimally develop, organize and integrate clinical-outcome data, research data, business intelligence, and population data so that information is accessible and usable to empower research and improve medical practice.

Making greater use of available data to improve care

Some have compared efforts to take advantage of the data to trying to drink from a fire hose. Consider DNA as an example. Our genetic variations contain clues to disease risk, disease prognosis and treatment response. The identification of such clues by scientists and their translation into medical practice is a major enterprise. Soon, expense will no longer be a major limitation to obtaining a readout of an individual’s entire genetic makeup. “A complete human genome assay will be an assay like any other, at least in terms of cost and time,” Hawgood said.

However, as vivid as the water hose analogy may be, it might be more apt to say that in many organizations data of many types dwells in various unconnected dammed reservoirs, with little of it flowing to potential users.

Much of the day’s discussions centered not only on identifying data to collect and on ways to use this data, but also on how best to “unlock the data” that already exists.

In introducing the day’s theme, Hawgood said that in his view, UCSF, despite the depth and range of clinical and research data being collected, must develop ways to make much greater use of available data in the day-to-day workflow to improve research and patient care.

UCSF’s leaders in informatics can learn from what others have already done. “We want to take enough time to make sure that we’re not repeating other people’s mistakes,” Hawgood said.

Already this year UCSF is completing implementation of a new electronic medical records system, called APeX, tailored to UCSF by EPIC Systems Corp. of Madison, Wis. The system features a single, comprehensive record for each patient.

Apart from being a boon to physicians and other care providers, information within the new clinical record can be “de-identified” to protect privacy and then made available to researchers.

The experience gained from the implementation and the system itself may be a good jumping off point for using data to advance research and education. But the true potential of APeX as a platform to support collaborative research is still being investigated. Taking full advantage of UCSF medical records for research — and enabling ways for new research findings to be used to better guide patient care — will require new innovations.

UCSF already has convened a task force, soliciting input from an external team of international leaders in the field, to explore strategies to bolster bioinformatics on campus, including the establishment of new academic programs and infrastructure through which computer sciences faculty and other bioinformatics experts could be recruited, new experts trained, and novel research collaborations launched. In addition, Hawgood noted, thanks to UCSF’s proximity to Silicon Valley, “We are in a spectacular region for partnerships.”

UCSF is exploring how to accomplish its bioinformatics goals within UCSF and its affiliates, as well as ways in which to access and use data in research networks that span institutions. In addition, there is a need to share information with other providers to provide the best care to patients who also obtain health care outside of UCSF, a theme discussed at last year’s School of Medicine retreat as well.

Using hospital systems as living laboratories

In his keynote address at this year’s retreat, “Aligning the Academic Health Care Enterprise for Acceleration of Precision Medicine,” Isaac Kohane, M.D., Ph.D., a renowned bioinformatics expert and a professor of pediatrics and health sciences and technology at Harvard Medical School, said that the expense of working with data from clinical records has historically been much more expensive than working with genetic and molecular laboratory data.

Kohane, who co-directs the Harvard Medical School Center for Biomedical Informatics, has led efforts to develop computer systems to allow cheaper use of clinical records data from multiple hospital data systems in the study of genes and disease, while maintaining privacy.

Kohane talked about the potential for “apps” to capture useful information related to health outside of the hospital or clinic — for instance a tool that tallies nutritional information on purchases from the cash register.

In his own research Kohane now combines clinical and genomic data to learn more about cancer and autism, but he also presented research showing that such systems — had they been in place earlier — could have called attention to serious side effects of Vioxx and other drugs much sooner.

Kohane’s described workflows and systems that can better “unlock” clinical data to speed research discovery and its application in medical practice, while lowering the costs of using clinical data.

Imagining UCSF’s future in the Digital Age

Speakers at a morning panel titled “Imagining UCSF’s Future in the Age of Information Technology,” included Opinder Bawa, chief technology officer for the School of Medicine; Michael Blum, M.D., medical director of information technology for the UCSF Medical Center; Catherine Lucey, M.D., vice dean for education; Joe DeRisi, Ph.D., co-chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics; and moderator Clay Johnston, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at UCSF and vice chancellor for research.

Not all bioinformatics applications are orchestrated institution-wide from the top down. Panelists and commenters from the audience highlighted a role for applications developed by smaller groups. For instance, as an educational tool, UCSF faculty from the Department of Emergency Medicine have spearheaded implementation of software used by physicians-in-training to respond to simulated clinical scenarios unfolding in real time.

The data collected during these exercises can be used to better understand how long it is likely to take for emergency room physicians to take critical actions — in the management of chest pain or in the ordering of pain medication, for example. In essence, the data can be used to learn more about how we learn, knowledge that can be incorporated into successive generations of teaching tools.

In the coming years, physicians will be trained to become increasingly comfortable using improved, data-driven, decision-making software tools, according to Lucey. “We will be able to teach students how to learn for themselves for 30 to 40 years, and we will free faculty up to teach in person what needs to be taught in person.”

DeRisi described how information on UCSF graduate school applicants is being used to identify factors associated with future success. In addition, he described how extensive data collection is being used to log graduate students’ progress and decision-making throughout their careers —  another way of identifying early career paths that bode well for future success. DeRisi also talked about an information-technology partnership that allows lab notebook entries made on pad devices to be immediately incorporated into a computerized database.

Developing more innovative research, clinical protocols

An afternoon panel — “The Future Is Now” — moderated by Robert Hiatt, M.D., Ph.D., co-chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and deputy director of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, focused on two large-scale collaborative research programs co-led by UCSF researchers in which molecular, clinical and demographic data already are being put to work to develop more innovative research and clinical protocols.

Laura van’t Veer, Ph.D., leader, and Laura Esserman, M.D., co-leader of the cancer center’s breast oncology program, described the ATHENA Breast Health Project, which unites UC academic medical centers in a state-wide collaboration. The project will initially involve 150,000 women throughout California who will be screened for breast cancer and followed for decades.

ATHENA project leaders aim to create common systems to integrate clinical research and care across the UC campuses to advance the science of prevention, screening, diagnosis, and treatment of breast cancer. The collaborators are creating a biospecimen repository that has broad racial and ethnic representation. A major goal is to marshal molecular and clinical data to better personalize breast care, tailoring treatment to the patient and avoiding overtreatment, and to use the information gained to drive innovation in prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

Neil Risch, Ph.D., co-chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF and director of the UCSF Institute for Human Genetics, along with Catherine Schaefer, Ph.D., director of the Kaiser Permanente Research Program on Genes Environment and Health, described progress to date in building the largest data base of its kind to focus on genetic variation and environmental exposures in an older population.

The average age of the hundreds of thousands of individuals whose genetic information will be genotyped for the project is 65. The project’s foundation is Kaiser’s electronic health record, which for many Kaiser Permanente members has information spanning decades — including information on clinical diagnosis and treatment as well as lab-test results and prescription information. UCSF expertise has allowed extraordinarily fast genotyping, as well as uniquely large-scale analysis of telomeres to quickly grow the molecular component of the data resource.

The afternoon panel provided a useful point of reference for break-out groups that met afterward, charged with identifying institutional priorities, problems and potential solutions in advancing the use of bioinformatics in research, clinical care and education.

For instance, the ATHENA collaborators have standardized protocols used at the different medical centers, including protocols for mammography screening. To make clinical data more useful for research, some breakout session panelists advocated more extensive standardization of clinical imaging and clinical lab protocols and reporting throughout UCSF clinical practices.

The Kaiser-UCSF collaboration highlights ways to combine strengths across organizations. While Kaiser is famous as a health maintenance organization, UCSF is perhaps best known as a tertiary care center. Some breakout session panelists raised the question — also raised at last year’s retreat — of whether or not the focus of UCSF research should more closely reflect the patient population seen at UCSF and its affiliated medical centers. UCSF specialists routinely gather extensive information on large numbers of patients with serious acute and chronic conditions, including many of the most difficult–to-treat cases. This extensive data is a potential gold mine for research aimed at identifying factors related to disease risk, prognosis and treatment outcomes.

Moving toward a new taxonomy of disease

The retreat followed on the heels of a similarly themed report by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), “Toward Precision Medicine: Building a Knowledge Network for Biomedical Research and a New Taxonomy of Disease” [PDF] by a committee co-led by UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann, M.D., M.P.H. The NAS committee advocated the creation of a “knowledge network” that could link researchers in collaborations that span the nation and globe.

The NAS panel envisioned a future in which there is much greater use of genomic and other molecular data to improve and refine the classification of diseases, but also recognized an opportunity to improve research by more extensively taking into account information about how patients fare in the clinic or hospital.

Instead of the current state of affairs, through which biological, pre-clinical and clinical research eventually lead to advances in medical practice, the new paradigm will be a virtuous cycle through which — with appropriate privacy protections — patient data also will feed back into research. In patient care increasing amounts of laboratory information will become available and interpretable more quickly to help teams of caregivers make more accurate and effective decisions and choices in diagnosis, prognosis and treatment for each individual patient.

Family and Community Medicine residency program also receives a commendation.

UC Davis' Thomas Balsbaugh (center) with family and community medicine residents

The residency program for the UC Davis Department of Family and Community Medicine has received accreditation for five years — the maximum possible — and a commendation from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). The organization evaluates and ensures excellence in post-graduate medical training programs in the United States using a rigorous peer-review process.

“Our faculty, residents and staff are united in creating a successful learning environment for physicians in training,” said Thomas Balsbaugh, residency program director and associate clinical professor of family and community medicine. “Our climate of professionalism and enthusiasm for helping residents connect with their passions as physicians played a strong role in the positive outcome of the accreditation process.”

The notification letter commended the program, which has been continuously accredited since 1984, for its “substantial compliance with the ACGME’s Requirements for Graduate Medical Education without citations.”

“This accreditation represents a substantial achievement by the residency program, the department and the graduate medical education team,” said Jim Nuovo, professor of family and community medicine and associate dean of Graduate Medical Education at the UC Davis School of Medicine. “It is very special when a program receives such a positive report, and it validates that the family and community medicine team provides a leading example of what residency programs can and should be in developing models of care and education that result in better health for all.”

Under Balsbaugh’s leadership, the residency program has earned a national reputation for excellence in mentoring the next generation of family medicine practitioners to provide high-quality, compassionate patient care. As principal investigator on the Song Brown Family Practice Residency Training Program and a number of other education grants, Balsbaugh is at the forefront of preparing health professionals to meet primary-care needs of diverse populations, especially the medically underserved.  In 2010, he and the residency program were featured on the PBS NewsHour about innovative approaches for addressing the nation’s shortage of primary-care physicians.

In addition to Nuovo and Balsbaugh, the family and community medicine team involved in the accreditation process included Barbara Burton, residency program coordinator; Kay Nelsen, associate clinical professor and associate director of the residency program; and Huey Lin, associate clinical professor and assistant director of the residency program.

The UC Davis School of Medicine is among the nation’s leading medical schools, recognized for its research and primary-care programs. The school offers fully accredited master’s degree programs in public health and in informatics, and its combined M.D.-Ph.D. program is training the next generation of physician-scientists to conduct high-impact research and translate discoveries into better clinical care. Along with being a recognized leader in medical research, the school is committed to serving underserved communities and advancing rural health. For more information, visit medschool.ucdavis.edu.

UC Irvine program will prepare scientists to turn research into improved patient care.

Sherrie Kaplan, UC Irvine

The UC Irvine School of Medicine has kicked off an innovative master’s degree program in biomedical translational science that will prepare emerging doctors and scientists to turn basic and clinical research into improved patient care.

The Master’s of Science in Biomedical and Translational Science (MS-BATS) is a flexible program developed to address the acute needs for clinical researchers trained to meet the increasingly sophisticated demands of the clinical research environment. It is aimed at junior faculty in clinical departments, fellows, residents, fourth-year medical students, physicians and others with a solid basic science foundation who are interested in developing the skills needed to conduct, interpret, evaluate and apply clinical research.

“The recent emphasis by the federal government to speed biomedical discoveries into the health care marketplace make this program particularly timely,” said Sherrie Kaplan, program director and executive co-director of UCI’s Health Policy Research Institute. “Our curriculum has been developed to meet the increasingly sophisticated demands of the clinical research environment.”

The curriculum involves two years – six academic quarters plus one summer quarter – of coursework and research training. During their first year, students will focus on required coursework needed to establish a solid foundation in the fundamental disciplines underlying modern biomedical and clinical research. The second-year curriculum provides extensive research training where students will choose a research mentor and apply those principals learned during their first year of coursework.

“Initially, our MS-degree program curriculum will focus on the conduct and interpretation of clinical research and the assessment and improvement of quality of health care,” Kaplan said. “The long-range expectation is to offer additional fields of emphasis, especially in molecular medicine and population health sciences.”

For more information, see: www.som.uci.edu/msbats.

National initiative will support military members and their families.

The UC Davis School of Medicine participated yesterday in the kickoff of academic medicine’s formal involvement in first lady Michelle Obama’s Joining Forces initiative, which aims to bring attention to the needs of America’s military families in the areas of employment, education and wellness.

Hosted by Obama, the kickoff event took place at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. Timothy Albertson, acting chair of the UC Davis Department of Internal Medicine, represented the UC Davis medical school at the ceremony.

“We are proud that UC Davis has had long and successful partnerships with different facets of the U.S. military, and we look forward to contributing to Joining Forces,” said Albertson. Albertson is a U.S. Army combat veteran who was awarded the Combat Medical Badge.

The Association of American Medical Colleges formally supports Joining Forces, and is encouraging medical schools and teaching hospitals to address the health care needs of military service members, veterans and their families. The schools and hospitals that are supporting Joining Forces have pledged to mobilize their integrated missions in education, research and clinical care to train the nation’s physicians to meet veterans and their families’ unique health care needs, including post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI).

A summary of some of the UC Davis programs that support Joining Forces is as follows:

• David Grant USAF Medical Center partnership
  • Since the summer of 2005, the entire residency program of David Grant Medical Center, located at Travis Air Force Base, has been merged with the UC Davis Medical Center residency program. Military surgeons who received trauma training and completed surgical residencies at UC Davis applied the organizational principles they learned there while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, to great effect. At Kirkuk Air Base in Northern Iraq, a surgeon who had been trained at UC Davis Medical Center implemented what became known as “the Davis system.”
• Vascular Surgery Residency Program
  • The integrated residency program in vascular surgery accepts two residents per year for the five-year program, one civilian and one from the U.S. Air Force. Several factors have made integrated residencies in vascular surgery an increasingly desirable option, including a shortened training timeline compared to completion of a fellowship after general surgery residency.
• Internal Medicine Residency Program
  • In 2009, David Grant Medical Center established an internal medicine residency training program with the UC Davis Department of Internal Medicine. Currently four active-duty Air Force residents are in the program, with another two who have matched scheduled to begin in July 2012. The residents receive the majority of their training at UC Davis Medical Center, and at the medical center’s affiliated VA and Kaiser affiliates.
• Military Student Interest Group
  • The Military Medicine Student Interest Group is primarily intended for UC Davis medical students pursuing careers in the armed forces. The group serves as an important resource for sharing information about opportunities and challenges in training for and later providing medical care to U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines.
• Military Faculty Mentors
  • The School of Medicine’s Office of Student Wellness has assembled a group of faculty members who have served in the military or still retain some form of active status to serve as mentors to medical students who are veterans, or are considering a career in military medicine. The faculty members have agreed to make themselves available to these students to provide counseling, advice and other support to help them avoid feelings of burnout and isolation.
• John A. Majda, MD Foundation Grant
  • The Office of Student Wellness, in collaboration with two student leaders, was recently awarded a two-year grant from the John A. Majda, MD Foundation to pursue additional support for military students. Specifically, the goal of this project aims is to identify and characterize the factors that protect against burnout in military medical students.
• Partnership with U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
  • UC Davis Health System has a long and successful partnership with the VA Northern California Health Care System. For example, UC Davis Medical Center provides care for veterans needing specialized services that are not available on-site at the VA. The VA serves as an outstanding teaching center for many UC Davis medical students and residents. UC Davis collaborates with VA colleagues on a variety of research studies, including studies conducted at the Sacramento VA Medical Center facility and the VA Outpatient Clinic and Center for Rehabilitation and Extended Care in Martinez.
• CTSC Clinical Research Center, Sacramento Veterans Administration Hospital
  • Located at the former Mather Air Force Base, the CTSC Clinical Research Center is one of only four such facilities housed at any of the nation’s 158 VA medical centers. It is a highly specialized patient unit that provides medical scientists with opportunities for the careful study of disease. Substantial numbers of veterans have participated in trials and benefited from being provided novel treatment and diagnostic opportunities.
• UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Center
  • The UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Center is one of only 29 research centers designated by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging. The center’s goal is to translate research advances into improved diagnosis and treatment for patients while focusing on the long-term goal of finding a way to prevent or cure Alzheimer’s disease. It conducts trials in Sacramento and in Martinez at the VA Medical Center to understand how common factors like age, ethnicity, race and socioeconomic status contribute to the onset of neurodegenerative diseases.

Read full, detailed descriptions of these programs.

First lady Michelle Obama and Jill Biden created Joining Forces to bring Americans together to recognize, honor and take action to support veterans and military families as they serve our country and throughout their lives. The initiative aims to educate, challenge, and spark action from all sectors of society to ensure veterans and military families have the support they have earned. The initiative focuses on key priority areas — employment, education, and wellness while raising awareness about the service, sacrifice, and needs of America’s veterans and military families. More information is available at: www.JoiningForces.gov.

Wolfgang Dillmann also named Helen M. Ranney Endowed Chair.

Wolfgang Dillmann, UC San Diego

Wolfgang H. Dillmann, M.D., has been selected as chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine. He has also been named the Helen M. Ranney Endowed Chair, the school’s first faculty-funded endowed chair, founded in 1991 in honor of the department’s second chair.

With nearly 470 full-time faculty members and more than 100 academic researchers, the Department of Medicine is one of the inaugural departments in the UC San Diego School of Medicine and the largest. Nationally recognized for research, teaching and clinical care in internal medicine in specialties ranging from arthritis and respiratory disease to hypertension and cancer, its internal medicine specialty training programs include 108 resident physicians, 83 ACGME fellows, and 131 postdoctoral research fellows. The department is also engaged in nearly 380 different biomedical research programs with funding awards totaling $113.6 million in fiscal year 2011.

Dillmann came to UC San Diego in 1979 as an assistant professor, moving up to associate and then full professor by 1987. He served as chief of the Endocrinology and Metabolism Division from 2005 to 2010, and as interim chair of the Department of Medicine since 2010. He is the fifth chair in the department’s 43-year history.

He received his bachelor’s degree from Gymnasium, Aschaffenburg in Germany and his M.D. degree in medicine from the University of Munich. He completed his internship at Mount Sinai Hospital, followed by residencies in medicine and endocrinology, both at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, the academic medical center associated with Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He began his career as an assistant professor there, and then served as an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota for two years before coming to San Diego.

His research interests in the laboratory include thyroid hormone action in the heart, as well as studies related to diabetic cardiomyopathy and the effects of excessive enzymatic protein glycosylation in cardiac myocytes and their influence on heart function. Dillmann’s lab also conducts studies related to the expression of specific heat shock proteins and protection of the heart against cardiac ischemia.

Dillmann is a member of the Association of American Physicians, the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. In the field of endocrinology and metabolism he is a member of the Endocrine Society, the American Thyroid Association, the American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association and the International Society for Heart Research. He is past associate editor of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, past editorial board member of the Journal of Biological Chemistry and served as a member of the Cardiac Hypertrophy and Heart Failure NIH Study Section.

Highlights include new stem cell research building and high-tech educational center for teaching and learning.

UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann at the dedication of the Teaching and Learning Center

The year 2011 turned out to be a fantastic one for UCSF as measured by myriad institutional and individual accomplishments that indicate its collective strength and stature as one of world’s top health sciences universities.

Despite a tough economy and ongoing financial challenges, UCSF started the year off celebrating the much-anticipated openings of a state-of-the-art stem cell research building and a high-tech educational center for teaching and learning — both on the flagship Parnassus campus. These projects, financed through public and private funds, are key investments in realizing UCSF’s vision of becoming the world’s pre-eminent health sciences innovator and educating the next generation of health professionals.

In February, the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine opened its doors at the Mount Zion campus, offering the best of modern medicine with established healing practices from around the world and becoming a hub for research, education and patient care in integrative medicine.

And the success story that is UCSF Mission Bay continues as the university marked a milestone in October with a “topping out” ceremony of UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay, an innovative 289-bed complex to feature three separate hospitals, specializing in serving children, women, and cancer patients. The medical center complex is on pace to open in early 2015.

[Related: UCSF advances research from bench to bedside; Year in pictures]

One of the biggest victories in 2011 came when the National Institutes of Health awarded UCSF’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) a second, five-year award of $112 million to further its work toward encouraging the rapid translation of research to improve patient and community health.

True to form, faculty and leaders at UCSF continue to garner much-deserved recognition and rewards from prestigious institutions and associations in medicine and science. Among these individual achievements: Mark Laret, chief executive officer of UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, was elected as chair of the Association of Americal Medical Colleges Board of Directors; Frank McCormick, Ph.D., director of the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, was elected as president-elect of the American Association for Cancer Research; and John Roberts, M.D., chief of transplant surgery, was elected vice president/president-elect of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network/United Network for Organ Sharing Board of Directors.

Read more

Center is the largest surgery training and research facility in the U.S.

“The lab is unbelievable. I consider myself lucky. When I am not writing research papers, I can take a break and train on the new robots,” said Dr. Elisa Coker, a fourth year resident in the Department of Surgery at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “I work here every day and am still blown away when I give tours. There is nothing like it in the world.”

What Coker is referring to is the recently opened Center for the Future of Surgery (CFoS) located in the new Medical Education and Telemedicine Building at the School of Medicine. CFOS is the largest surgery training and research facility in the United States. Its gleaming white rooms boast more than 20 training stations located within 11,440 square feet of space. Surgeons, gastroenterologists and nurses can access the newest simulators, tools and cameras, representing $30 million in equipment.

“I am part of a surgical team that is developing new minimally invasive techniques that are better for patients in terms of recovery and cosmetic effect,” said Coker, who arrived at UCSD from the University of Colorado. “At one time, laparoscopy was considered a new crazy technique. Now, it’s the standard of care. That’s what we are doing here at UC San Diego, developing the next techniques and tools that will revolutionize surgery.”

Coker and the surgical residents gravitate to the Simbionix LAP Mentor, a simulator that teaches basic as well as advanced laparoscopic skills. The system features seven procedures and 60 patient scenarios.

“It’s essentially like a video game that helps you practice eye and hand coordination,” said Coker. “Different kinds of operations can be performed including bariatric and colon procedures as well as gynecologic and urologic surgery.”

Surgeons who train at the Center for the Future of Surgery represent experts in all stages of their careers. It is expected that surgeons from more than seven countries will arrive in 2012 to learn natural orifice translumenal endoscopic surgery, or NOTES. This type of surgery allows surgeons to remove diseased organs through natural body openings such as the mouth. NOTES was pioneered at UC San Diego by Drs. Santiago Horgan and Mark Talamini.

“We were the first surgeons in the United States to remove a diseased appendix through the mouth,” said Dr. Santiago Horgan, chief of minimally invasive surgery and CFoS director. “While operating through the mouth or vagina may seem shocking, you can’t argue with the results. Patients are healing quickly and having shorter hospital stays. As a global training center, our ultimate goal is to develop and teach safe methods that will result in better outcomes, less pain and faster recoveries for every patient.”

One of the lab rooms at CFOS is marked “007” and reserved for medical device development. Here, surgeons can test and give feedback on tool prototypes.

“The Center for the Future of Surgery is part of the wheel of innovation at UC San Diego,” said Dr.Mark Talamini, professor and chairman of surgery at UC San Diego Health System. “To develop tools and techniques that are most safe for patients, surgeons and device manufacturers must exchange ideas and feedback. The Center for the Future of Surgery can spur these interactions by bringing surgeons, engineers, scientists and designers into one room, outside the OR, to refine everything from laparoscopic cameras to robotics.”

To learn more about the Center for the Future of Surgery, please call (619) 543-5347 or visit: http://surgery.ucsd.edu/cfs/Pages/default.aspx.

Growth strengthens position for San Diego’s only academic medical center.

UC San Diego Health Sciences has entered a period of remarkable growth, one that will strengthen its position as a destination academic medical center. In addition to the recent addition of the Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center and Medical Education & Telemedicine Building, plans are under way for the Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute building (projected to open in 2015) and the Jacobs Medical Center (with a planned 2016 opening.)

The location of these new facilities – in the heart of UC San Diego’s booming life sciences research and teaching campus – strategically positions UC San Diego Health System to further integrate patient care with research. It builds upon UC San Diego’s legacy of bench-to-bedside collaboration among scientists, clinical researchers, physicians and trainees.

The addition of the Jacobs Medical Center to the already thriving UC San Diego La Jolla campus will create the epicenter of advanced clinical care and pioneer new ways of advancing health, such as patient safety and leading-edge technology. It will become a hub for translational medicine and a tangible symbol of UC San Diego Health System’s commitment to compassionate patient care, discovery and delivery of the next generation therapies. The Jacobs Medical Center will be the catalyst that attracts multidisciplinary endeavors to the hub and a magnet for talented researchers, physicians and nurses.

UC San Diego is creating additional opportunities to facilitate biomedical research, drug discovery and health care delivery. The Clinical and Translational Research Institute, the Institute for Engineering in Medicine and the Institute for Genomic Medicine were created in recent years to synergize the interactions between UC San Diego Health Sciences, the Jacobs School of Engineering, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Calit2, the San Diego Supercomputer Center and the Division of Biological Sciences, allowing researchers to cross major scientific thresholds on a daily basis, particularly in the areas of bioengineering, genomics and regenerative medicine – of particular relevance in a new era of personalized medicine.

The only academic medical center in San Diego, UC San Diego Health System boasts combined clinical and research strengths in major specialty areas including cardiovascular care and advanced surgery, along with clinical and basic cancer research and treatment at the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center – the region’s only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center –  and the Shiley Eye Center, which provides comprehensive eye care, advanced diagnostics and sophisticated surgery, along with basic research into the underlying causes of and treatment for eye disease and blindness.

U.S. News & World Report consistently recognizes UC San Diego Health System among the nation’s best, ranking it as the No. 1 health system in San Diego in the magazine’s first-ever “Best Hospital” metro rankings.  It is also the region’s only adult hospital ranked among the best in the nation in six specialty areas (cancer, diabetes, nephrology, orthopedics, psychiatry and pulmonology) in the 2011 “Best Hospitals” issue.

UC San Diego Health System is also nationally recognized for its information technology initiatives, as well as an advanced infrastructure that seamlessly integrates clinical systems to improve the quality and efficiency of health care delivery and positively impacted patient safety and outcomes. In addition, this year UC San Diego was named one of the top 10 institutions in the world for medicine by QS (Quacquarelli Symonds), rankings, published last week by London’s The Guardian.

“Our goal is to become a destination health system that addresses the most urgent health needs for the people of San Diego, the nation, and the world, while also attracting the best and brightest physicians, researchers and surgeons to our faculty,” said Dr. David A. Brenner, vice chancellor for health sciences and dean of the School of Medicine. “By building on our reputation for clinical, research and teaching excellence – particularly in core areas such as surgery, cardiovascular and cancer care – we are well on our way to achieving this vision.”

UCLA workshop to educate health care workers on proper use of antibiotics.

Are you aware that colds, flu, most sore throats and bronchitis are caused by viruses? Did you know that antibiotics do not help fight viruses and that using them for viral infections only decreases their effectiveness overall?

Millions of Americans take antibiotics each year to fight illness, trusting they’ll work. However, the pathogens are fighting back. Within the past couple of years, new drug-resistant patterns have emerged, and resistance to common antibiotics has increased.

“We can help this serious emerging problem by educating patients and health care workers about the proper use of antibiotics,” said Dr. Daniel Uslan, assistant clinical professor of infectious diseases and director of the UCLA Antimicrobial Stewardship Program, which promotes the appropriate use of antibiotics for hospitals in the UCLA Health System.

In partnership with the Centers for Disease Control’s Get Smart about Antibiotics Week, taking place Nov. 14–20, Uslan and his team will offer a continuing medical education program for health care providers and staff. Topics will include the prompt diagnosis and treatment of infections, the appropriate prescribing of antibiotics, and following infection-prevention techniques to prevent the spread of drug-resistant infections in hospitals.