The Ministry of Health and Consumption of the Junta de Andalucía maintains its commitment to improve the quality of life of patients From the investigation, an activity that allows to know the behavior of diseases deeply and propose the best therapeutic options. In this sense, the Secretary General of Public Health and R&D of the Ministry, Áurea Morillo, has visited the facilities of the Computational Medicine Platform of the Progress and Health Foundation, a public entity that depends on the Ministry of Health and Consumption and that, among other functions, manages the R&D biomedical within the Public Health System of Andalusia. Morillo, accompanied by the managing director of the Foundation, Gonzalo Balbontín; of the managing director of the Virgen del Rocío University Hospital, Nieves Romero; and of the scientific director of the platform, Joaquín Dopazo; He has been able to know firsthand the work carried out by the scientists of this structure and its impact on the quality of life of patients and users of the public health system.
The Computer Medicine Platform is conceived as a Key piece for the development and implementation of personalized medicine within the Public Health System of Andalusia and develops its activity based on four specific lines of work. On the one hand, the advanced genomic analysis for the diagnosis, an activity that focuses on investigating patient genomes and, specifically, in seeking mutations causing disease. “With bioinformatics prosecutions we seek what differences there is between the genetics of the patient and that of the healthy individual. This allows to find the cause of the disease and offer a diagnosis,” Dopazo explained to the General Secretary of Public Health and R&D.
On the other hand, scientists on this platform also perform Epidemiological surveillance work Analyzing the genomic data of viruses and bacteria, monitoring them to control both their circulation, environmental and hospitable, and the appearances of new variants. Recently, in two scientific publications, said circuit have described, as well as their application to the Nile fever virus, describing its genetic evolution and the new lineages that have been detected. Dopazo and the team of scientists who make up the computer medicine platform have explained to Morillo that they develop a transverse work line that goes through the Software development to optimize genomic data management and that “clinical professionals can apply it with patients.” Thus, they have created various population databases of different pathologies in Spain that serve as a consultation to identify the most common variants of diseases.
-Population Health Base
Finally, another line of work of this research platform focuses on generate evidence through Real world data analysis (RWD, for the acronym in Real World Data) that are all those referred to the health of patients and the provision of health services that are compiled routinely and from different sources of information, such as electronic medical stories, among others. In Andalusia, these data are stored in the Population Health Base (BPS) of the Public Health System of Andalusia, a valuable resource with More than 15 million records of accumulated users Since 2001, it represents One of the world’s most extensive clinical data repositories.
“With this line of activity we can do All kinds of retrospective studies“Dapazo explained.” For example, we have been able to develop an early predictor of ovarian cancer from the data that has been passively recorded in the health system. The idea is that, with these predictors, Let’s be able to get ahead of the diagnosis of this disease From information such as blood analytics, previous diseases, used medication … “. Based on this data we create a model” that learns to Identify a pattern of use of the health system prior to the disease appearingthus being capable of making a forecast and anticipating a diagnosis of ovarian cancer, in an example of what will be the preventive medicine of precision of the future. “
