Somehow I managed to pull a muscle in my leg. Most likely it was launching back into an aggressive set of exercises after having been away on a trip in Eastern Europe. The doctor thought it would be prudent to get an x-ray of my hip and so there I stood at the window at the radiology lab being asked to fill out a form with a lot of information they already had. I knew better but could not resist asking why it was necessary. "We need the information". I said they already had it. The receptionist said they could look it up but only if I had been there in the last thirty days. I resisted the temptation to explain that the cost of storage had plummeted in the last decade and was close to zero for the data I would be putting on paper for the hundredth time. It certainly isn’t the fault of the receptionist or the x-ray technician or even the radiologist who later read the results. The problem is the "system" and the system is owned by the management of the healthcare providers and the insurers. The hundreds of billions of dollars being spent could be reduced substantially if the management could move faster to implement basic information technology such as is used in retail, manufacturing, and by various arms of government (like e-file at the IRS). All of us should be pushing for this. The result will be lower costs, higher quality of care, and fewer medical errors.
On a more positive note, great progress is being made in the use of information technology in the clinical area. One of the important approaches to understand the underlying mechanisms of cancer has been to analyze cancer tissue microarrays (TMAs). The analysis can result in improved treatment and therapy planning for cancer patients. The problem is that it takes a lot of computer power to do the analysis. The World Community Grid is now changing the amount of computing power available.
Our laptops and desktops are idle most of the time. Even when we are "using" them, the percentage of their horsepower actually being used is small. That is the simple concept behind the World Community Grid. More than 200,000 people have "donated" 400,000 PC’s to the grid. When any of the PC’s are not busy, a software "agent" kicks in and delivers the unused capacity to the grid. The combined computing power of the PC’s in the grid can do as much TMA analysis as a traditional computer would do in 130 years!
"Help Defeat Cancer" is one of three projects using the World Community Grid. The Human Proteome Folding project is analyzing the structures of human proteins and pathogen proteins. FightAIDS@Home is a project focused on using computation methods to identify candidate drugs that have the right shape and chemical characteristics to block HIV protease.
Anyone can donate idle and unused time from their personal computers by downloading
World Community Grid’s free software and registering at the WCG website. No forms required. I have been participating in the grid since November 2004 with several of my PC’s and have found it to be easy, safe and secure. It is also a good feeling to know that your spare cycles are going toward something that can improve humankind.