Obesity Press Release

I wanted to put part of the press release we did concerning a deal we have in Saudi Arabia. It is great to be a part of the first ever cohort study in the Arab world. This is what makes this job satisfying.

Remedy Informatics, Inc., the leading provider of registries for Life Science and Translational research, announced that King Saud University’s Obesity Research Center, located in Saudi Arabia, has selected Remedy’s Investigate™, the world’s first and only integrated research management system, to track all research activities at the Center.

“The opportunity to work with and support a client like King Saud’s Obesity Center is thrilling for us because their mission aligns perfectly with ours,” said Gary Kennedy, Founder and CEO of Remedy Informatics. “King Saud’s researchers are working to deliver innovations that will benefit patients in Saudi Arabia, and hopefully around the world. This is precisely what our software is designed to do. The goal is to make discoveries and then innovate solutions for patients.”

Pediatric Diabetes Registries: When Baby Steps Are Not Enough

Chad Malone, M.D., and Gary D. Kennedy, M.B.A.

Abstract

Effective diabetes research relies on pattern recognition. Although information technology (IT) has been used to aid researchers in recognizing patterns, there are still barriers to effective data collection, analysis, and collaboration inherent in using outdated methods and technology designed to fulfill clinical, not research, purposes. This article discusses seven problems with current research and outlines a solution in which innovative IT can be harnessed to overcome each problem, resulting in better research outcomes. New IT solutions on the market, such as meta-registries, are designed specifically to handle the complex data collection and analysis problems associated with diabetes research. A meta-registry with an ontology automatically harmonizes data from disparate sources, allowing researchers to devote their time to pattern recognition. With all essential data centralized and harmonized, researchers are also provided with a more complete view of each patient or research subject. When researchers can view and report across all data types at the same time, they are able to discover patterns and associations that are indistinguishable using traditional methodologies. This capability proves extremely beneficial, particularly for multifactorial disease research such as diabetes research.

J Diabetes Sci Technol 2011;5(3):571-578

Disease Registries 101…is that when two diseases get married and pick out house wares?

The term registry conjures different meanings to different groups. Couples use a registry when marrying. Hotels have registries of guests. And so do hospitals. There are also donor and recipient registries for hearts, kidneys, bone marrow transplants, etc. The thing these all have in common is each registry is a record of some sort containing data that are useful.

In medicine, researchers eat, breathe, and sleep data. And depending on the organization, these data could be housed all in one place, or (like in most cases) data could reside in a multitude of spreadsheets, on different computers, or in one or more homegrown databases serving as rudimentary storage.

Leap forward to today…with real “registries” for medical research available, and there is change in the air that is almost palpable. The gains to be had by accessing all data, and sharing it among multiple entities in many cases, are outweighing former norms of guarding data until the death (literally in many cases). Data was the lifeblood which sustained activity, so it was an understandable attitude. However, now technology to bring data together, share it, and research it with powerful tools doesn’t require the Pentagon’s budget. This is great in the case of rare diseases which inherently are underfunded by said government.

The lesson, thus, is when you hear the word “registry”, think of a better way of storing and amassing (a.k.a., “aggregating”) research data that is easier to share as desired, harmonized to omit inconsistencies in terminologies or units, and at researchers’ fingertips to query using more powerful tools than ever to yield 360-degree views at the patient and disease level to accelerate breakthroughs.