The main aim of this project was to create robust business plan which will describ the creation in Poland of a Centre of Excellence for in silico medicine1, the rapidly-emerging technological domain that will dominate worldwide healthcare in the 21st century. In silico medicine is the automated use of powerful computation to bring four key benefits to patients:
• Personalised assessment, diagnosis and treatment, derived from imaging and other clinical data
• New measures of disease (‘biomarkers’), computed from 3D models using FEA2 and CFD
• Access to the entire knowledge-base of medical understanding, constantly updated
• The accelerated introduction of new drugs and devices, using in silico development methods.
The Centre will therefore establish the generic development engine capable of transforming any innovative computational healthcare solution into a deployable clinical reality.
Poland, and in particular Małopolska, are perfectly positioned to play a key role in this new domain of applied computational medicine since Kraków educates large numbers of medical and IT professionals, and routinely engages in interdisciplinary research with Europe’s world-leading in silico research community. Also in Małopolska region there is a high concentration of research hospitals in and around the city, and the entrepreneurial community has recently entered a phase of rapid growth, and this includes life science companies.
The Centre will exploit these advantages to build a world-class facility, attractive to all CDSS developers, and will have a major impact at both regional and national scales, with lasting benefits for Polish and pan-European society.
