VisualizeMED Event Highlights Modeling and Simulation in Medicine

ASME recently hosted VisualizeMED: Modeling and Simulation in Medicine, a three-day virtual event focused on examining the role that modeling and simulation can play in advancing healthcare. The event brought together mechanical engineers and medical industry professionals/practitioners to help drive product collaboration, boost innovation, and increase confidence in models and simulations.
 
The regulatory submission process for new medical devices and pharmaceuticals can often be long and costly. Manufacturers need to increase speed, quality, and results, and modeling and simulation technologies aim to do just that. Physical prototypes are becoming a thing of the past as developers turn to virtual means to refine their models, allowing for elimination of poor designs before they ever leave development. Scott Gottlieb, Former Commissioner, FDA, noted that “modeling and simulation play a critical role in organizing diverse data sets and exploring alternate study designs. This enables safe and effective new therapeutics to advance more efficiently through the different stages of clinical trials.”
 
VisualizeMED offered more than 30 technical sessions for attendees, including sessions covering “AI Enhancement to Modeling,” “Clearing Regulatory Hurdles,” and “Modeling for Cellular, Molecular, and Genomic Therapy Development.
 
The event featured an opening keynote from Giovanni Traverso, a physician, scientist, MIT Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and gastroenterologist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) at Harvard Medical School. Traverso has been named as one of WIRED magazine’s “32 innovators who are building a better future” and has co-founded several biotech companies.
 
Other speakers included:

• Markus Reiterer, Distinguished Scientist, Medtronic
• Windi Hary, Chief Regulatory and Quality Officer, HeartFlow, Inc.
• James Coburn, Senior Advisor for Emerging Technology, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
• Allison Claas, Investigator II, Modeling and Simulation, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research
• Alex Fok, Professor, Department of Restorative Sciences at the University of Minnesota, School of Dentistry

 In conjunction with technical and plenary meetings, the event also held several workshops convening leaders in government, academia and technology in intimate working sessions to drill down into specific topics at the nexus of technology and healthcare.  These included a deep dive into the role of cryopreservation on the vaccine supply chain, and the impact modeling and simulation can have in advancing and supporting the biopharmaceutical industry.
 
For a full list of VisualizeMED speakers, click here.
 
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