Workshop Title:

BioDynaMo - Building the Future Today

Date:

March 11th, 2023 (CET)

Organizer:

SCImPULSE Foundation (NL) and University of Surrey (UK)

Keywords:

• Computational medicine
• Agent based simulations
• Telemedicine in silico trials

Workshop Chair:

Personal Bio:

Dr. Manca is Chairman of the Board of Directors of SCImPULSE Foundation, scientific attaché CERN, member of NATO STO HFM-330 and IST-189, member of the International Committee of WFATT, member of the board of the Italian Society of Telemedicine, host of the European Liaison Program of Telemedicine (ISOMERISM-EU).

Workshop Committee Members:

Dr. Marco Manca, SCImPULSE Foundation

Prof. Antonio V Gaddi, Italian Society of Telemedicine

Dr. Roman Bauer, University of Surrey

Dr. Vasileios Vavourakis, University of Cyprus

Workshop Description:

Background:

Progress in computing technologies is posed to accelerate the change of our societal value chains, and healthcare and life sciences are expected to witness major evolution after decades of resistance and lackluster results. If the headlines are mostly grabbed by successes in data sciences and machine learning, healthcare and life sciences require dependable tools to explore the limitations of knowledge and the uncertainty associated. Agent based simulations are being adopted by many communities as a useful and pragmatic tool to work in such direction, and we are here to discuss progresses in their dependability and performances.

Goal / Rationale:

Remaining rooted in real world applications, we will walk through the landscape of current developments in agent based simulations for healthcare and life sciences, evaluating the promises and pitfalls of the field, and trying to propose ways forward. We will focus on BioDynaMo (https://biodynamo.org) and other European experiences in physiological simulation and computational medicine, to offer the participants the opportunity to get up to speed with best practices and gold standards, and to start their own personal experience with the appropriate tools. Focus will be on how to identify appropriate applications for the tools available, and how to interact with the existing communities to enrich the ecosystem for mutual benefits.

Scope and Information for Participants:

The focus shall be on the developmental and ecological questions. From developmental neurobiology, to health tissue life long adaptations to radiotherapy; from modeling trajectories of healthcare performance for varying payers strategies, to infectious diseases spreading in closed environments or compact societies. We expect the participants to bring well formulated research questions and/or to be ready to team up with others, to initiate an exploration of potential collaboration and hands-on experimentation with the computational tools introduced during the workshop. There is a possibility to submit scientific communications that will be evaluated for inclusion in the International Assembly within which the workshop is hosted, by following the online procedure https://www.sitelemed.it/congressointernazionale-sit-2023/#abstract-submission or by emailing the scientific secretary eugenio.luciani@novamedica.it

Highlights:

On March the 11th 2023 the workshop "BioDynaMo: building the future today" was held in Bologna (Italy) as a satellite of the Italian Society of Telemedicine's bi-annual National meeting and first International Bologna Consensus Assembly on Telemedicine. The workshop focused on current best practices in computational modeling of human diseases in research, with the goal to evaluate the work to be done to effectively and safely translate the tools and approaches into clinical practice. The lecturers invited by the BioDynaMo collaboration offered a critical analysis of the results and known pitfalls of applying computational models in life sciences, and described the best practices to moderate uncertainty and evaluate the dependability of models. The 120 participants, mostly University undergraduate and graduate students from Bologna and Parma, were very active in participation and discussion during the hands on demonstrations, and the lectures attracted several tens of rotating listeners from among the 1000 participants (medical doctors, lawyers, biomedical engineers) of the host event, who continued the conversation about potential augmentation of RCTs, inclusion of models in new drugs/indications authorization requests, and even as tools for continuous hypothesis testing in drug safety monitoring activities later towards the end of the day.

Access to Workshop:

CONF-SEML 2023 Workshop: BioDynaMo - Building the Future Today

Venue:

Bologna (IT) - Hotel Savoia, Via Del Pilastro, 2 - 40127 Bologna

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