President

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Presidents Information Technology Advisory
Committee (PITAC)

• Briefing to the
• Advisory Committee to the Director,
• National Institutes of Health,
• Bethesda, MD
• December 6, 2001

Larry Smarr Department of Computer Science and
Engineering Jacobs School of Engineering,
UCSD Director, California Institute for
Telecommunications and Information Technology
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Coordination of Federal IT RD Programs
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Presidents Information Technology Advisory
Committee (PITAC)

• Top IT Experts From Academia and Industry.
• 22 Members Who Advise the Administration
• How to Accelerate the Development and Adoption of
  Information Technologies
• First Report
• Information Technology Research Investing in
  Our Future (1999)
• Recommended Increasing Strategic Investments
  From
• 1.46 Billion in FY 2000
• To 2.83 Billion in FY 2004
• Four Priority Areas for Long-term RD
• Software
• Scalable Information Infrastructure
• High-end Computing
• Socioeconomic Impact

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Current MembershipRaj Reddy (CMU) Irving
Wladawsky-Berger (IBM), Chairs
PITAC Membership List
Co-Chairs

• Eric A. Benhamou, Ph.D. / 3Com Corporation
• Vinton Cerf, Ph.D. / WorldCom
• Ching-chih Chen, Ph.D. / Simmons College
• David M. Cooper, Ph.D. / Lawrence Livermore
  National Laboratory
• Steven D. Dorfman (retired) / Hughes Electronics
  Corporation
• Robert Ewald / Learn 2 Corporation
• Sherrilynne S. Fuller, Ph.D. / University of
  Washington School of Medicine
• Hector Garcia-Molina, Ph.D. / Stanford University
• Susan L. Graham, Ph.D. / University of California
  - Berkeley
• James N. Gray, Ph.D. / Microsoft Research
• W. Daniel Hillis, Ph.D. / Applied Minds, Inc.
• Robert E. Kahn, Ph.D. / Corporation for National
  Research Initiatives (CNRI)
• Ken Kennedy, Ph.D. / Rice University
• John P. Miller, Ph.D. / Montana State University
• David C. Nagel, Ph.D. / Palm, Inc.
• Edward H. Shortliffe, M.D., Ph.D. / Columbia
  University
• Larry Smarr, Ph.D. / University of California -
  San Diego
• Joe F. Thompson, Ph.D. / Mississippi State
  University
• Leslie Vadasz / Intel Corporation

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PITAC Follow-on Reports

• In 2000, three panel reports were released
• Resolving the Digital Divide Information,
  Access and Opportunity
• Transforming Access to Government through
  Information Technology
• Developing Open Source Software to Advance High
  End Computing
• In 2001, three panel reports were released
• Transforming Health Care Through Information
  Technology
• Using Information Technology To Transform the Way
  We Learn
• Digital Libraries Universal Access to Human
  Knowledge

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The Two Reportswww.itrd.gov/ac
February 1999
February 2001
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PITAC Panel on Transforming Health CareFinal
Report February 2001

• Co-Chairs
• Sherrilynne Fuller, Ph.D. / University of
  Washington School of Medicine
• Edward Shortliffe, M.D., Ph.D. / Columbia
  University
• Panel PITAC Members
• Robert E. Kahn, Ph.D. Corp. for National Research
  Initiatives
• John P. Miller, Ph.D. Montana State University
• Larry Smarr, Ph.D. University of California - San
  Diego
• Other Members
• Bruce Davie, Ph.D. Cisco Systems
• Don E. Detmer, M.D. University of Virginia
• John Glaser, Ph.D. Partners HealthCare System
• Eric Horvitz, M.D., Ph.D. Microsoft Research
• Takeo Kanade, Ph.D. Carnegie Mellon University
• Sid Karin, Ph.D. San Diego Supercomputer Center
• Russell J. Ricci, M.D. IBM Corporation
• Bonnie Webber, Ph.D. University of Edinburgh

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PITAC Healthcare Panel Had Input From

• Office of the Secretary of HHS
• Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning
  and Evaluation (DHHS)
• National Institutes of Health
• National Cancer Institute
• National Library of Medicine
• National Center for Research Resources
• National Center for Health Statistics
• National Science Foundation
• Centers for Disease Control
• Food and Drug Administration
• Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

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Examples of IT Research Challenges Relevant to
Biomedical and Health Care Applications

• Interactive Large-Scale Biological Simulations
• Data-Driven Modeling of Biological Processes
• Data Mining in Large Clinical and Biological
  Databases
• Multimodal Information Management
• Biomedically Motivated User-interface Hardware
  and Software
• Advanced Networking Services, Including QoS and
  Wireless
• High End Systems to Support Biomedical Research,
  Simulations, and Modeling
• Privacy, Security, and Authentication
• Language Understanding / Text Processing
• Clinical Records and Their Integration
• Access to Information Systems for People With
  Disabilities
• Automated Policy Inference
• Research on the Implications of IT on the Health
  Care System

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PITAC Healthcare Panel Findings

• The U.S. lacks a broadly disseminated and
  accepted national vision for information
  technology in health care.
• Critical, long-term research, technology, and
  policy issues need to be addressed if we are to
  realize the potential of information technology
  to improve the practice of health care.
• A critical and enabling investment in biomedical
  computing infrastructure and enabling
  technologies has not yet occurred
• Achieving the potential of information technology
  to improve health care will be constrained until
  we develop a larger cadre of researchers and
  practitioners who operate at the nexus of health
  and computing/communications.

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PITAC Healthcare Panel Findings

• The biomedical community, including the Federal
  research agencies, has tended to rely on
  information technology innovations that are
  produced by investments in other parts of
  Government.
• This adversely affects the pace at which
  biomedicine benefits from IT research
• Solutions to IT research issues may never reflect
  the needs of biomedicine without involvement of
  the biomedical community
• The introduction of integrated decision-support
  systems that can proactively foster best
  practices requires enhanced information-technology
  methods and tools.

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PITAC Healthcare Panel Findings

• Advances in IT are critical in order for DHHS to
  accomplish its mission to improve the quality of
  U.S. health care
• The role and management of information technology
  in DHHS has several limitations, which must be
  addressed if the health care community is to
  benefit from the promise of the information age.

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PITAC Healthcare Panel Recommendations

• R1. Establish pilot projects and Enabling
  Technology Centers to extend practical uses of
  information technology to health care systems and
  biomedical research.
• R2. NIH, in close collaboration with NSF, DARPA,
  and DOE, should design and deploy a scalable
  national computing and information infrastructure
  to support the biomedical research community.
• R3. Congress should enhance existing privacy
  rules by enacting legislation that assures sound
  practices for managing personally identifiable
  health information of any kind.

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PITAC Healthcare Panel Recommendations

• R4. Establish programs to increase the pool of
  biomedical research and health care professionals
  with training at the intersection of health and
  information technology.
• The Panel applauds the NIHs Biomedical
  Information Science and Technology Initiative
  (BISTI)
• R5. DHHS should outline its vision for using
  information technology to improve health care in
  this country and subsequently devote the
  necessary resources to do the basic information
  technology research critical to accomplishing
  these goals.
• R6. DHHS should appoint a senior information
  technology leader to provide strategic leadership
  across DHHS and focus on the importance of
  information technology in addressing pressing
  problems in health care.

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NIH is Funding a National-Scale Grid Federating
Multi-Scale Neuro-Imaging Data
Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN)
NIH Plans to Expand to Other Organs and Many
Laboratories
Part of the UCSD CRBS Center for Research on
Biological Structure
National Partnership for Advanced Computational
Infrastructure