OSHEAN eCurrent Fall 2019 | Page 34

provided by the so-called RINET service. But things a panel of Nobel Prize winners agreed With the data flowing in, Rynearson said — 2012
Loftus said much of that service is provided on on was that computational biology is the field she is preparing to make use of the new lines rented from commercial services. of the future. People in that line of work could supercomputer at Brown University. Unveiled genetically engineer a plant that would be an in November, the computer can perform more Improved Efficiency,
Better Care
excellent energy source or develop a cheaper than 14 trillion calculations per second. Lifespan has implemented services for
way to decode a person’s full genome. She says she’s already learned that the wireless temperature monitoring and real-time
plankton have an enormous capacity to asset tracking to ensure operational and cost
change. They are flexible and able to adapt effectiveness for its healthcare community.
to changes in the environment. These new features are currently in place in
“It’s like using UPS and Federal Express and
paying by each package [of data] that’s sent,”
Loftus said. But as the new lines are strung, he
said, it will be as though the state had its own The futures for medical scientists are
fleet of delivery trucks. overrated, the magazine said. “But the niche of
URI, he said, is using transmission lines that
can carry 1,000 megabits of data per second;
the new service will have 10 times more
computational biologist appears to offer better
prospects both of landing a job and of making a “What we’re doing in the lab is trying to
significant contribution.” understand their limits of survival,” she
said. “This is really an exciting time. It’s
capacity. For example, says Loftus: If a movie
took 20 gigabytes of space on a computer (20
billion characters) it would take 2.6 minutes
to transfer it on URI’s current system. When
the upgrade is completed, the data could be
generation of students needs both biology requirement that a pre-defined temperature
and computation analysis skills. But I think must be maintained within refrigerators and
there are going to be a lot of jobs.” freezers where pharmaceuticals, blood, or
data sets, Loftus says, are 50 times larger than her career, she said, scientists in her field
a movie. have discovered things they never imagined.
to climate change and other influences,” says
When she discovered that several genes coded
Rynearson. “Plankton is tiny. It doesn’t say it’s
stressed. But these new methods let us peer
into their cells and look at genes that turn on
or turn off. We used to look at 1 or 5 genes on a
good day in a plankton that has 15,000 genes.
The new techniques let us look at all 15,000
at once.”
The new field of biology is called computational
biology because instead of focusing on a few
specifics, it requires analysis of vast volumes
of data.
A few years ago, U.S. News & World Report
published an article saying that one of the few
34
|
2019 eCURRENT
We used to look
at 1 or 5 genes
on a good day in
a plankton that
has 15,000 genes.
The new techniques
let us look at all
15,000 at once.
Newport Hospital.
In healthcare, there is a regulatory compliance
Specker is an endocrinologist. Throughout
organisms in the environment are responding
Island Hospital, Miriam Hospital and
transformative,” Specker said. “This transmitted in less than 30 seconds. Typical
“We’re trying to get insights into how
Lifespan’s three acute care hospitals — Rhode
growth hormones, nobody believed that and it
took several years for other scientists to accept
her findings. Now, she says, she’s excited about
what Rynearson may learn.
tissue are stored. Traditionally, most healthcare
organizations assign individuals to frequent
the areas and devices that need to be
monitored and record the temperatures
within manually. Through AeroScout, Lifespan
developed a technology to improve its
efficiency by utilizing a system with a small
battery-operated tag placed into the
refrigerator or room where temperature
Climate variability is happening, Specker said. needs to be monitored. “The system uses
Rynearson’s work will allow her to keep track of the hospital’s wireless network and sends
what’s going on with the basis of the food web. a temperature every five minutes into a
The new fiber optic system will allow scientists database. The data within the system can be
across the state to work together. compiled into a report easily for regulatory
“It’s unimaginable what Tatiana might discover,” compliance,” said Elaine Palm, Lifespan
Specker said. “Literally unimaginable.” director for IS infrastructure.
In addition, the system is able to send alerts
By Peter Lord, The Providence Journal
Copyright © 2010 The Providence Journal.
Reproduced by permission
to designated pagers if something falls out
of regulated range, allowing the hospital to
correct any problems before reaching a point
Stronger Together
|
35