Sarbattama Sen

Inflammation is part of the immune response, allowing the body to heal from injury, but uncontrolled inflammation can stress or damage the body. Diet is known to play a role in inflammation in adults, but exactly how a woman’s diet during pregnancy may affect inflammation and, in turn, her health and the health of her baby, is not well understood.

A new study led by BWH researchers uses the Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII) to score a woman’s diet during pregnancy and measure the influence of diet on both inflammation during pregnancy and on maternal and infant outcomes before and after childbirth. The team found that more pro-inflammatory diets are associated with lower rates of breastfeeding and lower-than-expected birth weight in certain groups.

“As health care providers for pregnant and post-partum women, we often think about and advise women on diet in the conventional sense of calorie and macronutrient intake, but we haven’t paid much attention to dietary inflammation,” said Sarbattama Sen, MD, a neonatologist in BWH’s Department of Pediatric Newborn Medicine. “By focusing on the elements of diet that may be linked to inflammation, we’ve been able to tease out certain outcomes associated with a more pro- or anti-inflammatory diet.”

The DII focuses on the nutrients that are found in different food items and uses evidence from previous studies to assign an inflammatory score to each food component. Previous studies in non-pregnant adults have found that some food components—such as caffeine, as well as trans, saturated and monounsaturated fats—have a pro-inflammatory effect, while others—such as vitamin A, beta carotene, fiber and magnesium—have an anti-inflammatory effect. Using these data, past researchers were able to assign foods an inflammatory score.

In the current study, 1,808 participants in Project Viva, a study of expectant mothers in Massachusetts that began enrollment in 1999, completed food questionnaires in the first and second trimesters of pregnancy, which were used to create individualized DII scores for the women. Higher scores indicated a more pro-inflammatory diet and lower scores indicated a more anti-inflammatory diet. A blood sample was drawn from each participant in the second trimester, and two markers of inflammation—C Reactive Protein (CRP) and white blood cell count—were measured. The team also collected information on women’s pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI).

Participants who had higher DII scores also had higher CRP levels. Women who had higher BMIs before pregnancy tended to have higher DII scores and also higher CRP levels.

Researchers also looked at a number of pregnancy outcomes. Among women who reported that they initiated breastfeeding, women who had a more pro-inflammatory diet had a lower likelihood of successfully breastfeeding their child past one month of age. Obese women who had a more pro-inflammatory diet were also more likely to deliver a baby who weighed less than would be expected at a given gestational age. Researchers did not observe an association between dietary inflammation and other maternal or infant outcomes such as gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, maternal weight gain during pregnancy or cesarean-section delivery.

“We have known for some time that excessive inflammation is associated with adverse health outcomes in adults,” said Sen. “But there have been few studies investigating the role of inflammation in pregnancy, when both the health of the mother and the fetus are at stake. We hope that this work opens the door for more investigation of the role of inflammation in important pregnancy outcomes such as fetal growth and breastfeeding.”

Marcelo DaSilva

Marcelo DaSilva, MD, an associate surgeon in the Division of Thoracic Surgery, is running his first Boston Marathon as a member of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Marathon Program to pay tribute to his friend and colleague, the late Michael J. Davidson, MD.

“I’m honored to have the opportunity to run for BWH and for Mike,” DaSilva said. “To me, running in the name of a loved one is extremely powerful. I know that’s what motivates me every time I lace up my sneakers and head out on a course.”

DaSilva is running in this year’s Boston Marathon as a member of the “Running to Remember Dr. Michael J. Davidson” team, which is part of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Life.Giving.Breakthroughs. Marathon Team. The team is raising funds to establish the Michael J. Davidson, MD, Endovascular Fellowship, which will offer support for cardiothoracic surgeons who have completed their formal residency training and are seeking to enhance their surgical skills in transcatheter valve techniques. The fellowship will provide direct experience using novel and less invasive solutions for complex cardiac patients.

DaSilva, who joined BWH in 2008, described Davidson as a talented surgeon and educator. He said by establishing this fellowship, BWH and health care institutions around the country will be able to continue training the best physicians.

“That’s what Mike would have wanted,” he said. “He was a visionary who was ahead of his time in how he thought about cardiovascular surgery. Like so many of us, Mike wanted to make a difference in people’s lives, and I am pleased that this fellowship will help us do just that.”

DaSilva isn’t new to the racing scene; he’s previously run nine other marathons, including Chicago and New York City. He’s looking forward to passing the cheering crowds, running up Heartbreak Hill and crossing the finish line. Meditation is what gets him through some of the hardest parts of races, he says.

“Running a marathon can be compared to performing surgery, meaning that it takes a lot of determination, training and physical and mental endurance to cross the finish line or complete a case,” DaSilva said. “It’s an amazing feeling to run among thousands of other participants knowing that they all have a reason for running. I know Mike will be with the Brigham team in spirit on race day.”

To learn more about the BWH Marathon Program, visit BWHMarathonProgram.org.

From left: Kathryn Rexrode, YiDing Yu, Ritu Gill, Lesley Solomon and Esther Rhei

At a recent panel discussion featuring female physician innovators, Esther Rhei, MD, a breast surgical oncologist at BWH and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, said she considers herself a newcomer to innovation. As medical director of the BWH Breast Center, one of Rhei’s greatest challenges has involved discussions with patients about what their breasts will look like after certain types of surgeries since it’s impossible for patients to truly envision how they would look post-surgery. Rhei wanted her patients to have this knowledge in making such an important decision.

Rhei pitched the problem to provide a way for patients to envision their bodies post-surgery at a Brigham Innovation Hub (Brigham iHub) Surgery Innovation Series event in 2014. The Brigham iHub team is now working with Rhei to create a database solution.

“You don’t have to be a longtime innovator or know everything about putting an idea into practice to get the ball rolling,” Rhei said. “Lesley Solomon and her team supported this idea every step of the way.”

During a panel discussion on Feb. 26, female physician entrepreneurs Rhei, radiologist Ritu Gill, MD, MPH, and YiDing Yu, MD, a graduate of BWH’s Internal Medicine Residency program who is now chief innovation engineer at Atrius Health, talked about their paths to innovation at BWH.

As part of its seminar series, the Center for Faculty Development & Diversity’s Office for Women’s Careers (OWC) hosted the discussion, which was moderated by Kathryn Rexrode, MD, MPH, faculty director of the OWC.

Solomon, executive director of Brigham iHub, offered tips for success in entrepreneurship and spoke about the benefits of working with Brigham iHub. 

Solomon said that in a 2013 Brigham iHub survey, 72 percent of clinicians stated that they had health care improvement ideas but didn’t take steps to move those ideas forward due to funding, time and lack of clarity on next steps.

“In developing Brigham iHub, we realized that we needed to create a support structure so that people knew where to go when they had an idea,” Solomon said. “Our vision is to disrupt traditional medicine, reinvent health care and unleash your knowledge and expertise so that we can foster innovation at all stages.”

During the panel, Gill, who is currently working on developing a tool to identify and characterize actionable lung nodules—small masses of tissue in the lung that are sometimes cancerous—told attendees to think big and never underestimate themselves.

“The word ‘impossible’ is not in my dictionary,” she said. “If a problem comes up, I figure out a way to tackle it. I encourage all of you to think outside of the box and believe that anything is possible.”

Phil De Jager

A team of investigators at BWH and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) has launched a study of individuals at risk for multiple sclerosis (MS), called the Genes and Environment in Multiple Sclerosis (GEMS) project. By focusing on first-degree family members of MS patients, researchers seek to better understand the sequence of events that leads some people to develop the disease. Their work also sets the stage for developing and testing interventions that may block the onset of MS.

“Early detection of MS means the possibility of earlier treatment, which could delay the accumulation of disability,” said co-senior author Phil De Jager, MD, PhD, who directs the Program in Translational NeuroPsychiatric Genomics at the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases at BWH. “Our long-term goal is to map out the sequence of events from health to disease in order to identify and intervene early in individuals at high risk for MS.”

The GEMS study leverages the outreach efforts of patient advocacy groups such as the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, social media such as Facebook and electronic communication to recruit first-degree relatives (parent, sibling or child) of people who have been diagnosed with MS. More than 2,600 family members have been recruited from across the U.S. Family members can interact with the study through its Facebook page, where updates on the project and MS-related news are shared. The study, which will ultimately enroll 5,000 first-degree relatives, will continue for the next 20 years.

“This first report from the GEMS study is important because it shows that we can recruit the large number of family members that is necessary to perform a well-powered study of MS risk factors,” said lead author Zongqi Xia, MD, PhD, of the Department of Neurology.

Upon enrollment in the study, participants completed a web-based questionnaire about their medical and family histories, environmental exposures and more. Participants also submitted a saliva sample for DNA extraction.

Although first-degree relatives are 20 to 40 times more likely to develop MS than the general population, their risk is still low; researchers estimate that of 10,000 first-degree relatives, only about 62 will be diagnosed with MS over five years. Having a means to predict who is most at risk for developing MS not only provides an opportunity for early intervention, but also makes clinical trials for new treatments more feasible since the incidence of MS is low in the general population.

In their preliminary analysis, researchers tested a method to calculate an individual’s risk of MS and identified a subset of family members that may have a higher risk of developing MS than the average family member. This risk score could help design long-term studies of higher-risk individuals.

“This report is an important first step,” said De Jager. “We do not yet have a tool that we can use clinically to predict MS. To develop such tools and a platform for testing strategies to prevent the disease altogether, we are expanding GEMS into a larger collaborative study that will accelerate the progress of discovery and bring together a community of investigators to overcome this important challenge.

“Overall, the risk of MS remains very small for most family members,” said De Jager. “The most effective therapies for MS will ultimately be those that prevent its onset, as halting inflammation and disease progression is much more difficult once the disease has become established.”

Jessica Whited with an axolotl salamander

Jessica Whited, PhD, has fond memories of exploring the outdoors when she was younger—catching crayfish with her sister and studying butterflies and moths with her mother. Now a researcher in BWH’s Regenerative Medicine Center, Whited devotes her days to understanding limb regeneration in a species of salamanders and how research on these creatures might one day help humans suffering from limb loss.

Could you tell us about your work and how it could help patients one day?

My work is devoted to understanding limb regeneration in axolotl (Mexican) salamanders. The salamanders I study have legs that look and function very much like human limbs. They can completely regenerate these limbs, even as adults.

Millions of Americans are currently living with the consequences of having a major limb amputation, some of which are due to injuries and a rising number of which are due to diseases, including diabetes and peripheral artery disease—a condition in which plaque builds up in the arteries and reduces blood flow to the limbs. I believe that if we want limb regeneration in humans to become reality, we’ll only get there if we first understand how nature has solved this problem, which is why we’re studying salamanders.

How did you get interested in this field?

From an early age, my mother taught me how to identify, catch and display butterflies. I remember making my big score of a perfect tiger swallowtail on the ashes of our previous night’s campfire at the age of five. I also vividly remember going with my sister to a nearby creek to catch crayfish with our hands and coffee cans. I attribute my love of nature, which eventually gave rise to my interest in science, to these early experiences outdoors.

My grandfather, who was afflicted with peripheral artery disease, underwent a series of amputations starting with a few toes and culminating in his foot before he eventually died of the condition. This was my first encounter with the disease. I hope that someday our work will help people with this condition.

Tell us more about what it’s like working with salamanders.

Working with axolotls is a ton of fun and also a lot of work. They are permanently aquatic, which means we devote a great deal of time to keeping them clean and their water in good shape. We have hundreds of axolotls at all life stages.

Many species of salamanders can regenerate limbs. We work on axolotls specifically, though, because they have a generation time—the time between birth and when they can have babies—of nine months, which is shorter than many other salamanders.

What types of genetic tools are you working on developing?

In collaboration with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, we are making a map of all of the genes that get turned on or off during regeneration and which are specific to the regenerating part of the leg. We’re also mapping how this changes over time, with respect to specific kinds of cells.

In your opinion, why is BWH a good fit for your research?

BWH is a premier medical center. In orthopedic surgery, people are getting joints replaced and fractures fixed every day. It’s exciting to be a part of extending that outlook into the research domain, because doing research is how we make progress so that conditions that have no great treatment now might become treatable someday. Additionally, in a hospital, there’s the feeling that what you’re doing in the lab could have a double benefit—besides just pushing the boundaries of human understanding and satisfying curiosity, what you’re doing might actually help people someday.

3-D Printing in Healthcare Fair attendees take a look at 3-D printed models after the event.

From the auto and fashion industries to snack foods and retail, 3-D printing has sparked innovation in a variety of industries, especially health care. 3-D printing—the process of making a three-dimensional object from a digital model—is no stranger to BWH labs and clinics, as attendees learned at the 3-D Printing in Healthcare Fair, held earlier this month.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Surgical Innovation (CSI) and the Brigham Innovation Hub (Brigham iHub), the event featured brief presentations from seven Brigham and guest speakers who incorporate 3-D printing technology into their clinical care and research. More than 80 attendees sat in on the presentations, which were held outside of the Brigham iHub’s space in the Shapiro Center, and later met with speakers and examined 3-D printed models on display in the Brigham iHub’s space.

“With an expanding role in health care and research, 3-D printing is helping to create new innovations in patient care,” said Yolonda Colson, MD, PhD, executive director of the CSI and thoracic surgeon. “Having surgeons, physicians, scientists and engineers all working in a hospital setting helps to fuel this innovation.”

Radiologist Ritu Gill, MD, MPH, associate director of Surgical Imaging in the CSI, organized the event with the help of Radiology resident Tatiana Kelil, MD. Gill shared how her team is using 3-D printed models for thoracic surgery planning and how she and her team have designed customized implants and plates to treat rib fractures more efficiently.

Donald Annino, MD, DMD, of the divisions of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery, highlighted 3-D printing’s usefulness in jaw surgeries, for which traditional approaches can be limited. Surgeons can print custom reconstruction plates to precisely fit the particular curvature of a patient’s jaw, which reduces operating time and promotes better healing.

BWH is home to several 3-D printing resources, including the 3-D Slicer, a free desktop application built for medical image computing. Steve Pieper, PhD, of the Surgical Planning Lab, explained that this software facilitates the use of 3-D printing in areas such as image-guided surgery and quantitative imaging.

Seung-Schik Yoo, PhD, of the Department of Radiology, and E.J. Caterson, MD, PhD, of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, also presented at the event.

Tell us how you’re using 3-D printing technology in your area in the comments below.

Partners institutions are leaders in hospital-based federally funded medical research, with nearly $730 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) alone in 2015. Research is a key element of the overall Partners mission, in addition to patient care, education and community health.

“Having research as a part of our mission offers important societal and patient benefits,” said Partners President and CEO David Torchiana, MD. “Offering our patients access to the latest advances in medical treatment is dependent on allowing our researchers to better understand and fully appreciate the clinical applications of new developments.”

Integrating research and clinical care. At Partners, there’s a perfect storm brewing that could bring to reality the vision of personalized or precision medicine. Its elements include Partners eCare, the Partners Biobank and the Partners Big Data Commons—a data platform anchored by the Partners Research Patient Data Registry.

Partners Chief Academic Officer Anne Klibanski, MD, said the key to pulling these elements together is the robust electronic health record (EHR) that Partners eCare offers. “We have been able to integrate a number of initiatives and research tools through the Partners Big Data Commons. For example, patients who have enrolled in the Partners Biobank are linked to their health care data from the EHR and other research data—things like information on lifestyle, environment and family history. We’re getting ready to include imaging information in the Big Data Commons as well.”

An added bonus comes in the form of genomic data that further links research with patient care. Last year, investigators across Partners institutions, in collaboration with the Broad Institute, received two four-year grants totaling $12.3 million from the NIH as part of the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) network; grantees will study approaches to combining genomics and EHRs such as Partners eCare. Researchers will analyze genetic data from the 25,000-plus samples in the Partners Biobank, looking for variants that could impact clinical diagnostics and care. The study will also evaluate how this information can be provided to patients and their physicians so it can be used to support diagnosis, treatment and even prevention.

“This could include anything from identifying when a patient might be a candidate for a specific therapy to identifying when a genetic variation might result in adverse effects from a proposed therapy,” said Klibanski.

Direct patient engagement: The new research frontier. In the past, patients were contacted by their primary care physician (PCP) if they were eligible to participate in a research study. (Even before this step, the researcher had to contact the PCP, explain the study being conducted and ask if any of his or her patients might be eligible.) Occasionally, highly motivated patients might search the internet to find out about clinical trials for which they might be eligible.

All that will change with Partners eCare. When the new system is fully implemented across Partners, patients will have access to a research portal where they can enroll to be contacted by investigators working in areas that relate specifically to them. In addition, patients may be able to help define what some of the endpoints of a research project might be.

“Having patients’ perspective—knowing what would be meaningful to them as an outcome of a research project—is new and exciting territory,” said Klibanski. “Our capabilities in so many areas, including bioinformatics, genomics, data analytics and IT, are escalating rapidly and converging.”

NICU nurse Sandra Borgerson, with baby Noah and mother Toni Johnson-Lewis, on the day of Noah’s discharge

For 158 days last year, Toni Johnson-Lewis and her husband, Ron Lewis, made the NICU their home. Most of their days and nights were spent watching over their son, Noah, who was born prematurely at 22 weeks gestation, weighing less than a pound. Now, more than a month after Noah and his family headed home together, Johnson-Lewis said her son is making great strides. 

“Noah had a 10-percent chance of survival,” said Johnson-Lewis, who works in Research Management for Partners HealthCare. “But he was a fighter and wanted to be here. We relied on our faith and never gave up hope that our miracle would make it through this. We’re excited he’s on the road to good health.”

Weighing more than 15 pounds now, Noah is being weaned off of supplemental oxygen, achieving milestones and “growing like a weed,” Johnson-Lewis said. He receives frequent visits from visiting nurses and specialists and sees doctors at Children’s Hospital Boston for weekly check-ups.

Baby Noah on the day of his discharge from BWH

While coming home and taking care of Noah on their own was a major adjustment, Johnson-Lewis and Lewis say they are grateful to the BWH NICU staff who educated them about caring for their medically fragile baby.

“We’ve received so much support from the NICU team since the first day Noah was there,” Johnson-Lewis said. “Many of Noah’s primary nurses have checked in on us since discharge to see how he’s doing and to make sure we know how to take care of him in every way. It’s a good feeling knowing they still care about him.”

Noah at home, celebrating his half-birthday

Sandra Borgerson, RN, took care of Noah for the duration of his stay in the NICU and updated his parents about his progress as often as possible. She said it’s rewarding caring for babies during their most critical time in the NICU up through their discharge.

“It was a pleasure taking care of Noah and his family,” Borgerson said. “I look forward to seeing more photos and hearing updates on his progress.”

Earlier this month, the new parents celebrated Noah’s 6-month birthday with family and friends. Johnson-Lewis said it was wonderful to be able to mark this major milestone.

One exciting part of the family’s new routine at home is reading books to Noah each night before bed, a practice that started in the NICU, where staff encourage families to read to their babies daily through a new program called the Brigham Baby Academy. The goal of the reading program is to expose babies to a rich word environment to promote language acquisition and expression. Studies have shown that frequent exposure to meaningful auditory experiences reduces some of the stress of being in the NICU and aids in a child’s brain development.

Baby Noah at home

Carmina Erdei, MD, a neonatologist in the Department of Pediatric Newborn Medicine, said she feels fortunate to have had the opportunity to care for Noah and his family. During his stay in the NICU, Erdei often talked with Noah’s parents about the benefits of reading to their infant.

“It was a rollercoaster ride, with many ups and downs during the 158 days Noah spent with us, during which I had many opportunities to share happy moments, provide care and offer guidance during challenging times,” Erdei said. “I am delighted to hear that Noah is thriving and making great progress at home. Noah’s story is one of perseverance, dedication and faith, and I am grateful to him and his family for allowing me to be part of it.”

Jessica Allegretti speaks with BBC reporter Giles Yeo about FMT.

When Jessica Allegretti, MD, MPH, was a resident, she cared for a patient with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) whose words ended up shaping the path of Allegretti’s career.

The patient told Allegretti that she would not consider surgery to treat her IBD—which is defined by chronic inflammation of the digestive tract—unless she could get a fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) as part of her treatment. FMT is currently being tested in more than 90 research trials as a potential treatment for a variety of diseases and conditions, including IBD.

Presently, the only clinical application of FMT is to treat patients who have experienced three or more episodes of C. difficile (C. diff) or for patients who do not respond to antibiotics. C. diff is an infection that causes symptoms ranging from diarrhea to life-threatening inflammation of the colon. During FMT, fecal matter from a healthy stool donor is instilled into the colon of a patient through a colonoscopy to displace disease-causing bacteria and fight the infection.

As a medical resident, Allegretti didn’t know about the procedure, but after she researched it, she became immediately interested in the potential of FMT as a possible therapy for IBD.

“At the time, it was viewed as almost science fiction,” said Allegretti, who treats patients and performs clinical trials as part of BWH’s Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endoscopy. “In 2013, the first controlled trial came out in the New England Journal of Medicine showing that FMT was extremely effective at treating C. diff, and it took off from there.”

As a first year fellow at BWH, Allegretti helped to found the hospital’s FMT program, with support from her mentor and Crohn’s and Colitis Center Director Joshua Korzenik, MD, as well as Endoscopy Center leadership and the Division of Infectious Diseases. She is currently the only clinician at BWH who performs FMTs and does three to five of these procedures each week, a rate that has been increasing exponentially in the past four years. At the Brigham, one FMT yields a 95-percent success rate of curing C. diff (compared to the reported success rate in scientific literature, which is about 90 percent). Many other major academic medical centers also offer FMT.

Each patient who is a candidate for FMT goes through a detailed consent process, during which Allegretti discusses what to expect. From there, OpenBiome—a nonprofit stool bank—sends the frozen stool sample, which Allegretti instills into a patient via colonoscopy. Patients go home right after the procedure, similar to a routine colonoscopy.

“We know if it’s worked within 72 hours; the response is quite quick,” she said. “The symptoms of loose bowel movements or diarrhea go away and remain away. We provide counseling for patients to avoid unnecessary antibiotics, which are a big part of what’s driving C. diff infections.”

In addition to time in the clinic, Allegretti is involved in several clinical trials, including one that is testing the effectiveness of a single FMT in improving liver inflammation among patients with primary sclerosis cholangitis—a chronic disease that slowly damages the bile ducts. She also recently worked on a dose-finding study of fecal capsules, learning that lower doses are just as effective as higher doses when it comes to curing C. diff. She is beginning work on a study that will look at the use of FMT to treat obesity, which will include an initial transplant via colonoscopy and oral capsule maintenance therapy.

Though fecal capsules are not appropriate for all FMT candidates, Allegretti believes they are the future of FMT.

“Capsules allow us to not only offer FMT to a broader patient population in a more timely and cost-effective manner, but they let us do better research,” she said. “For example, for chronic disease, one FMT is not going to be enough, but with capsules, we can provide the maintenance therapy that is needed.”

Allegretti says the most rewarding aspect of this work are the results.

“Some patients with C. diff suffer for years and are ostracized by family and friends or they feel they can’t leave their houses,” she said. “They have an FMT and feel better almost immediately. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing these patients break the cycle of recurrent C. diff. FMT is not going to be a cure-all for all diseases, but it allows clinicians and researchers to better understand the role bacteria play in many gastrointestinal diseases and to make more sophisticated, targeted therapies. It’s an exciting therapy to be able to offer and study.”

Mark Andersen

Mark Andersen, MHA, MS, has been appointed interim chief information officer (CIO) for BWHC, as of Jan. 4. The appointment will ensure continued progress of Partners eCare implementation while the search for a permanent CIO continues.

Andersen joins BWHC from the University of Virginia (UVA) Health System in Charlottesville, where he served as interim chief technology and health information officer. A skilled and collaborative leader, he has a proven track record in health care information technology consultation and management, and brings extensive experience in integrating IT and innovation to support clinical operations. He joined UVA as interim chief technology and health information officer shortly after the launch of Epic at UVA’s 700-bed hospital, where he led the organization through a successful stabilization effort, effectively resolving issues related to resource management, training and data mining.

As senior vice president and chief information officer at Yale New Haven Health System, Andersen led the selection, contract and implementation process for the transition to Epic from multiple legacy systems. Prior to that, he was vice president of Management Systems and Technology at New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center and was director of Revenue Management for the Dallas-based Epic Healthcare Group.

Andersen earned his MHA at The Ohio State University and his MS in industrial engineering/health systems engineering from the University of Missouri. He began his health care career as an occupational therapist, and his commitment to patients and the highest-quality patient care has been a driving force throughout his career.

New parents Lauren and Maegan Jerr have read to their triplets Theodore, Conrad and Charlie every day since the babies were born prematurely at BWH last fall.

During a newborn’s time in the NICU, critical brain development is occurring, including the development of the pathways that control language skills. By reading to their babies, the Jerrs are not only bonding with them and reducing some of the stress of being in the NICU, but they’re also aiding in their children’s brain development.

“More than half of babies born at very low birth weight have language delays during childhood,” said Carmina Erdei, MD, a neonatologist in the Department of Pediatric Newborn Medicine. “This is not a coincidence, and there is something we can do about it.”

Terrie Inder, MD, MBChB, chair of Pediatric Newborn Medicine, and Erdei say that infants need frequent exposure to meaningful auditory experiences to ensure optimal early brain development. Studies show that preterm infants who are not exposed to language while in the NICU have lower language performance at age 2. In an effort to prevent language delays, the NICU is committed to promoting reading through a new effort informally called the Brigham Baby Academy.

“It’s our goal to ensure that each infant is read to at least once a day by a staff member or a parent,” said Erdei, who is co-organizing a book drive with NICU Nursing Director Marianne Cummings, MS, RN, to provide ample reading material for families.

Research points to the vast benefits of reading beginning at birth. In addition to advancing brain development, language skills and vocabulary, it can also build listening and memory skills. Through a snowball effect, Erdei explained, early language exposure increases reading proficiency by third grade, which is a strong predictor of high school graduation and career success.

It’s also an important way for parents and babies to bond. “Even when their eyes are closed, babies can hear and recognize their parents’ voices and are comforted by them, so reading helps them connect and relieve anxiety,” said Erin Gorham, BSN, RN, clinical nurse in the NICU.

Establishing routines is another way to enhance bonding, so staff encourage families to follow a daily bedtime routine that includes reading. The activity gives families a sense of normalcy during what can be a stressful and uncertain time, explained Gorham.

“The Brigham NICU gave us a book as part of our welcome packet, which was an important gesture in letting parents know just how important reading is,” said Maegan Jerr. “For us, it’s a family tradition we hope to continue for many years to come.”

With its book drive, the NICU hopes to increase awareness about the importance of reading and build its collection of books so they can be passed on to parents whose babies need them the most. “We are looking for new or gently used children’s books in any language,” said Cummings. “Staff have brought in books in Russian, Spanish and French Creole, from all over the world. Reading is something that all parents can do for their child that has a lifelong impact.”

You can donate a new or gently used children’s book to the NICU by bringing it to the Connors Center for Women’s Health security desk (Lower Pike), mailing it to BWH’s Pediatric Newborn Administration Office (75 Francis St., Boston, MA 02115) or contacting Paul Hughes at phughes@partners.org.

 Learn more about how you can help the Brigham Baby Academy. 

Watching our own Steve Elledge, PhD, accept the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award—one of the world’s most prestigious honors in biomedicine—was a Shining Moment not only for me, but for the entire research community at BWH. Steve was recognized for his work in illuminating how cells detect and repair DNA damage. His pioneering contributions have shaped the world’s understanding of cancer and other conditions.

Steve is a bright light in our Brigham community, whose success illustrates that we can change the future of medicine by asking questions and working tirelessly to find the answers. I can think of no more noble way to describe one’s calling to research than as Steve has articulated himself: “I have always wanted to make an impact on the world, to have my life on earth count for something. By contributing to basic research, I hope my work can accelerate discoveries to improve the lives and health of people.” As a leading academic medical center, we share Steve’s deep commitment to helping others by transforming the future of medicine, and I look forward to seeing what new advances our outstanding research community will make in 2016.

Betsy Nabel, MD
President, Brigham and Women’s Health Care

View all One Shining Moments

In a hospital-wide effort to reduce costs and improve efficiency, BWH officially launched the Bold Ideas, Big Savings program on Dec. 1. Through the program’s website, BWHers are encouraged to submit any and all cost-savings ideas they can come up with. If the idea is implemented, the individual or team that submitted the idea will be awarded a cash prize. Each idea is reviewed by the Bold Ideas, Big Savings committee to ensure it meets eligibility requirements of originality and feasibility.

BWHC President Betsy Nabel, MD, announced the first winners of the new program at Town Meeting earlier this week. The BWH Audiovisual (A/V) Services team was surprised with a $2,000 check for its cost savings idea that is set to save the Brigham about $60,000 in the next year.

The team’s idea, which began as a pilot this fall, is to provide furniture moving assistance internally for events held in Cabot Atrium and other spaces around BWH. Prior to the pilot, if any BWH department held an event requiring furniture removal or rearrangement, an outside vendor had to be hired at a cost of about $1,100 per event, even for tasks as simple as moving chairs from one side of the room to the other.

By moving furniture in-house, the A/V team has helped BWH increase efficiency and minimize disruptions to nearby areas since moving furniture can now be completed closer to the time of an event instead of several hours before. Additionally, the cost per event has decreased to about $100. BWH ergonomist Michelle Murphy helped the team learn how to safely move furniture and avoid injury.

“We saw departments spending money to do a job that our team would like to do, just because they didn’t know there are other alternatives,” said Peter Linck, manager of Office Services. “We met early on with Environmental Services, Security, Catering and Ergonomics and got their take on the best times to move and how the process should work.”

For the A/V team, thrifty thinking has paid off.

Do you have a cost savings idea? Submit it to the Bold Ideas, Big Savings program.

The Partners PROMs team. Photo credit: Josie Elias

Last month, members of BWHC, MGH and other institutions across Partners HealthCare came together for the first Partners Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) Summit. As a national leader in PROMs, Partners invited BWHC’s pioneering PROMs clinical leaders William Gormley, MD, MPH, Neil Martin, MD, MPH, Timothy Smith, MD, PhD, MPH, and others to share the important PROMs work their departments are doing. PROMs Medical Director Neil Wagle, MD, MBA, hosted the summit, and Partners Chief Clinical Officer Gregg Meyer, MD, and Chief Quality and Safety Officer Tom Sequist, MD, MPH, presented the event keynote.

PROMs measure some of the outcomes that matter most to patients, including improvements in back pain for a Neurosurgery patient or side effects, such as nausea, for a Radiation Oncology patient.

The collection of PROMS first rolled out across Partners in 2012 and has rapidly expanded in the years since, including at BWH. Patients answer a set of validated questions on an iPad or using Partners Patient Gateway before their appointments and at pre-determined intervals. Teams of clinicians glean a great deal of insight about their patients and how to improve their care through the collection and analysis of these vast and detailed data.

“Nothing matches the breadth, technical expertise and sophistication of Partners’ PROMs,” said Wagle at the summit.

Outcomes that matter to patients include such things as whether the patient can climb up a flight of stairs without feeling pain, get dressed without becoming short of breath or feel well enough to go out and socialize.

Added Smith: “The more data we collect, the more information we have about each patient and the better we can provide their care.”

From left: Beverly Hardy, Chris Lee, of MIT Hacking Medicine, Pothik Chatterjee, Hillary White and Siddharth Parmar

Looking to shape the future of health care and develop solutions to the field’s vexing challenges, creative minds gathered in Cabot Atrium from Nov. 6 to 8 for the third annual BWH Hackathon. The event was hosted by Brigham Innovation Hub (Brigham iHub) and MIT Hacking Medicine, a program that examines the intersection of technology and health care to solve the biggest health care challenges.

This year’s hackathon, which focused on digital health, gave clinicians, engineers, designers, programmers and entrepreneurs an opportunity to pitch projects aimed at improving health care delivery. It also included a special new track offered in partnership with Epic and Microsoft: developing innovative, clinically useful applications that integrate with Partners eCare.

“With the implementation of Partners eCare in May, there is tremendous opportunity for innovation building on Epic’s foundation,” said Adam Landman, MD, MS, MIS, MHS, BWHC chief medical information officer for Health Information, Innovation and Integration. “In 36 hours, several teams built working applications that have the potential to advance electronic health record systems.”

Throughout the weekend, experts from Partners HealthCare information systems, Epic and Microsoft were on hand to mentor teams on their applications and provide technical support.

More than 100 people formed 17 teams to develop solutions, and the teams competed for prizes during a pitch session on the last day of the hackathon. Team DrEvilCorp won the BWH Open.Epic Prize for its application that provides rapid interpretation of arterial blood gas (ABG) results in Epic. This information is vital when caring for patients with a critical illness or respiratory disease, but interpretation is complex. The application speeds up and simplifies interpretation and improves accuracy. The team will have the opportunity to meet with BWH and Partners experts for feedback and pilot the application at BWH in the future.

Team Herald was awarded the Microsoft Azure and Validic mHealth prizes for designing a platform for Epic that enables clinicians to set up rules to push real-time alerts when specific events occur. For example, cardiologists may create a Herald rule that pages them whenever one of their inpatients’ troponin—a marker of heart damage—rises.

Team ICDNav won the Brigham Innovation Hub Prize for creating a tool that makes applying ICD-10 diagnosis codes faster and more intuitive for providers.

Winning the MIT Hacking Medicine Prize was Vox Docs, which created an application that uses Amazon Echo, a wireless speaker and voice command device, to allow providers to use their voices to control the electronic health record without using a computer. For example, a provider could enter a room equipped with this tool and verbally ask for the patient’s allergies or order a CT scan.

“We learn a lot every year, and this year’s hackathon, in particular, felt extremely productive,” said Lesley Solomon, executive director of Brigham iHub. “The annual event is a great way for Brigham iHub to engage Boston’s extended innovation ecosystem to think about and help solve the health care challenges we face as a community. It creates a connection to the Brigham for many people who may never walk through our doors.”

Pothik Chatterjee, manager of Innovation Strategy & Ventures with Brigham iHub, was excited that so many people, including judges and mentors, participated.

“We had 40 mentors and collaborators in industry providing expert guidance,” he said. “I loved that so many BWH clinicians came to engage with teams and provide advice. It helped teams connect to the hospital and understand what happens here on a daily basis.”

In early 2016, Brigham iHub plans to meet with the winning teams to hear about their progress and offer advice on next steps.

Karin Michels

Years or even decades before a diagnosis, a cell can go rogue, acquiring the changes necessary to turn it cancerous.

Karin B. Michels, ScD, PhD, of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, and her colleagues are interested in both the environmental triggers that can increase the risk of a person getting cancer and the most vulnerable times in a person’s life when such an exposure can put someone most at risk.

Earlier this month, Michels received an award as part of the Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Program (BCERP). Under Michels’ leadership, BWH will serve as one of seven institutions carrying out new research to study risk factors and susceptible time periods preceding breast cancer.

For the last four years, Michels has collaborated with investigators in Santiago, Chile, to study a group of 500 girls and their development during puberty, which may be associated with future breast cancer risk. The new grant will allow Michels and her colleagues to use blood and urine samples from the girls—who are now 13 years old—to measure exposure to three key chemicals: perfluorooctanoic acid, found in consumer and commercial products and food packaging; butyl benzyl phthalate, a plasticizer used in materials such as PVC pipes; and zeranol, a chemical widely used by the U.S. and Chilean beef industries. Michels will also measure breast density in these girls—the strongest predictor of breast cancer risk later in life—using an innovative, extremely low-dose X-ray approach.

Breast cancer epidemiologists have traditionally studied middle-aged women and measured whether behaviors such as diet, exercise and body weight may increase the risk of developing a tumor. But Michels notes that there’s increasing evidence that breast cancer starts at a much earlier stage in life, long before symptoms are experienced, and that environmental and behavioral factors at an earlier age may be of critical importance for predicting—and limiting—risk.

“For us, the time of puberty is of particular importance because that is when the breast rapidly grows,” said Michels. “Any exposure during this time could impact long-term risk for breast cancer.”

Early risk factors for breast cancer that have been observed previously include a woman’s age at the time of her first period, her birth weight, her age at the birth of her first child and the number of children she has. But Michels and her colleagues are primarily interested in risk factors that one can mitigate or avoid, such as exposure to pesticides or chemicals found in plastic bottles or cosmetics.

“We want to translate and share our findings with the community, so that they are informed and changes can be made at the societal or individual level based on evidence,” said Michels. “It’s really about giving women the tools they need to make informed choices about their health.”

BWH’s renovated Cardiac Catheterization Lab (pictured above) opened on Oct. 26 after about five months of construction and roughly two years of planning. The lab features updated technology and equipment, more physical space and the ability to integrate newer, more compatible modalities in patient care. Cath Lab volume has grown significantly in the past few years, specifically in the structural heart procedure arena, which includes transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR). The new lab replaces the prior Cardiac Cath Lab, which opened 15 years ago. Below: Members of the Cardiovascular Division/Interventional Cardiology gather in the new space on the morning it opens.

From left: Jonathan Burdick, Pinak Shah, Ron Newman, Jack West, Rebecca Bailey, Cory Gallant, Mary Lou Dorman and Joshua Peltz

Jackie Somerville (at right) at the induction ceremony

On Oct. 17, Jackie Somerville, PhD, RN, FAAN, chief nursing officer and senior vice president of Patient Care Services, and Jeffrey M. Adams, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN, senior nurse scientist at BWH and executive director of the Workforce Outcomes Research and Leadership Development Institute (WORLD-Institute), were inducted as fellows in the American Academy of Nursing during its annual policy conference. Being named an academy fellow is one of the most prestigious honors that can be achieved in the nursing profession.

A group of more than 20 BWHers, including nurses and Nursing and Patient Care Services leaders, traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend the induction and show their support.

“As a clinical nurse at BWH, I was honored to witness Jackie and Jeff’s induction as fellows in the American Academy of Nursing,” said Suzanne Fernandes, BSN, RN, of the ICU Float Pool. “It was a privilege to be in the presence of so many esteemed nurse leaders who have devoted their careers to improving the lives of patients in this country and around the world.”

Added Ron M. Walls, MD, executive vice president and chief operating officer: “On behalf of the entire Brigham community, I congratulate Jackie and Jeff for their outstanding achievement, which reflects the superior level of nursing and nursing leadership here at BWH.”

Throughout her career, Somerville has been guided by the principle that nurses must know the patient as a whole person to deliver the very best care. For her doctoral dissertation, she developed an instrument called the Patients’ Perceptions of Feeling Known by Their Nurses Scale. Measures include being recognized as a unique human being by their nurses, feeling safe, experiencing a meaningful, personal connection with nurses, and feeling empowered by their nurses to participate in their care. The instrument has been published and is used in hospitals nationwide.

Adams, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation executive nurse fellow who recently joined BWH as a senior nurse scientist in the Center for Nursing Excellence, has devoted his career to nursing research. He has developed and published the Adams Influence Model, which defines the factors, attributes and process of influence and power as they relate to nursing leaders, and the Model of the Interrelationship of Leadership, Environments & Outcomes for Nurse Executives, which provides structure for nursing administration education and practice.

Together, Somerville and Adams lead the WORLD-Institute, a novel academic and practice collaboration among BWH, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Arizona State University College of Nursing and Health Innovation, that studies nursing leadership.

Somerville and Adams were among a group of 163 nurse leaders inducted as academy fellows in recognition of their key contributions to the fields of nursing and health care and their influence on health policies and the well-being of the public.

“Being present at the induction ceremony was a great honor,” said Marjorie Brunache-Depestre, RN, nurse-in-charge and Caritas Coach on Tower 14AB. “I was so humbled in the presence of so many living legends in nursing. I couldn’t be prouder to be a BWH nurse.”

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that electronic health records must now include the option to designate patients’ sexual orientation and gender identity (SO/GI). Though care providers will not be required to ask patients about SO/GI, this important addition to electronic medical records has the ability to improve patient care, facilitate better research and reduce the health inequities faced by LGBT patients.

At BWHC, Harry Reyes Nieva and Kerstin Palm, MA, OTR/L, CHT, co-chairs of the LGBT & Allies Employee Resource Group, have been working to make this change a reality since May 2014, when BWHC and Partners leadership made a significant commitment to support the work necessary for the ability to document SO/GI demographics in Epic for Partners eCare implementation.

The multidisciplinary SO/GI eCare Working Group was then formed—comprised of clinical content experts, admitting and registration personnel, social workers and many others—to develop a framework for collection of SO/GI demographics in Partners eCare across all Partners institutions. The group created the Epic fields, developed the specific language that would be used in the system, held training sessions for clinicians and shared best practices to improve clinicians’ knowledge about how to accurately and compassionately gather SO/GI information.

Through the Employee Resource Group’s efforts, leaders at BWHC, Partners and MGH also co-signed a letter with several non-Partners institutions to advocate for inclusion of SO/GI demographics in Meaningful Use 3, further demonstrating the system’s commitment to LGBT health equity on a national scale. Meaningful Use is a Medicare and Medicaid program that awards incentives for using certified electronic health records to improve patient care.

“Collecting this information allows us to better understand LGBT health, including inequities in insurance coverage, access to care, diagnosis and treatment,” said Reyes Nieva, a research manager in General Medicine and Primary Care. “From a clinical perspective, understanding our patients as individuals is imperative to tailoring their health care to ensure a positive experience and the best possible outcome. By capturing SO/GI information, clinicians can be sure appropriate preventive care and screenings are conducted.”

Some of the health inequities experienced by LGBT patients include high rates of behavioral health issues, such as thoughts of suicide and suicide attempts, a higher prevalence of sexually transmitted infections and HIV, and a greater likelihood of being overweight or obese, lipid abnormalities, glucose intolerance, inactivity and cardiovascular disease.

Reyes Nieva, Palm and Tanya Zucconi, MBA, formerly of BWH, recently presented a workshop at this year’s Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA) annual meeting about the work they and colleagues across BWHC and Partners did to ensure the collection of SO/GI data from BWHC patients. The inclusion of SO/GI demographics in Partners eCare has positioned BWHC and Partners as leaders in the field of LGBT health care equality.

“Providers who may not have asked these questions in the past are now more aware of its importance and the support that exists for them institutionally,” said Palm, Outpatient Rehab Services manager at BWFH. “This is a systematized way that providers will be cued to get to know their patients in the areas of sexual orientation and gender—a way for patients to be known by their providers and have their health care tailored to them as individuals. This is best practice for patient care and continues our long tradition of high-quality health care centered on patients. I’m glad we’re doing it here.”

The BWHC LGBT & Allies Employee Resource Group meets the fourth Tuesday of every month. To learn more, email bwhlgbt@partners.org.

From left: C4HDS team members Danielle Isaman, Niteesh Choudhry, Namita Mohta, Kyle Morawski, Roya Ghazinouri, Julianne McDonough, Julie Lauffenburger and Alexis Krumme

Many highly effective health interventions are never widely adopted into routine care—sometimes because patients do not follow through on what has been recommended or because providers do not practice as the evidence would indicate they should.

For example, only about 40 percent of adults receive a flu vaccine and only half of patients who have had a heart attack continue to take their cardiac medications over the long term. Overcoming these gaps in health care implementation requires patients and providers to be more actively involved in health care delivery.

The Center for Healthcare Delivery Sciences (C4HDS), a newly created research center within the Department of Medicine, is working to address this problem by design, implementation and rigorous evaluation of novel ways to engage patients and providers in care delivery.

Under the leadership of hospitalist Niteesh Choudhry, MD, PhD, of the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, the C4HDS team focuses on interventions that have the potential to be scaled across settings and could help address engagement problems, including medication adherence, smoking cessation and narcotic misuse.

Studies currently underway at the center include randomized evaluations of the impact of text messaging to increase medication adherence; written commitment devices and “nudges” to increase influenza vaccination rates among Medicare beneficiaries; electronic medical record-based tools to prevent opioid over-prescribing; and others.

Choudhry said C4HDS wants the studies to be undertaken in the same conditions—with the same distractions, impediments and pitfalls—as physicians and patients would experience.

“The ultimate goal for the studies initiated by C4HDS is to create effective, simple and easily scalable interventions,” said Choudhry. “In addition, wherever possible, we want those interventions to address vital challenges: behaviors that can simultaneously address related problems, such as extended disability and hospital readmission.”

Additionally, the center’s two-year fellowship program in implementation research trains the next generation of delivery science academics and researchers.

“The center is a unique place for those interested in improving health care quality to gain the expertise and knowledge to conduct pragmatic clinical trials and evaluate novel strategies in a rigorous manner,” said Roya Ghazinouri, DPT, a physical therapist with extensive expertise in quality improvement, who directs operations at the center.

To learn more about C4HDS and ways to collaborate with the center, email rghazinouri@bwh.harvard.edu.

Ann DeBord Smith

Kicking off the innovation track at Discover Brigham were four presenters who have been able to leverage digital health care to solve common patient issues. The session, moderated by Jeff Greenberg, MD, MBA, associate medical director of the BWPO and medical director of the BWH Innovation Hub, gave each presenter seven minutes to present a compelling pitch for their project.

First to the podium was Alexander Lin, PhD, director of the BWH Center for Clinical Spectroscopy, who walked the audience through his cloud-based system that allows radiologists to detect brain tumors in MRI scans in as few as 30 seconds by keying in on a chemical by-product known as 2-HG (2-hydroxygulatarate). This technology, he believes, has the potential to expedite the diagnosis of brain cancer and ultimately improve surgical outcomes.

Benjamin Raby, MD, MPH, of the BWH Channing Division of Network Medicine and the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care, followed with a presentation of his smartphone application programmed to interpret a user’s breathing pattern in speech to detect the onset of an asthma attack. Raby is currently working with Cogito, a local tech company that specializes in voice analytic software, to optimize his program. His hope is that this same technology can be used to detect potential heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) as well.

The third presenter of the morning, Ann DeBord Smith, MD, MPH, a BWH General Surgery resident, detailed her own smartphone application, VISION, that can detect peripheral arterial disease (PAD) in as few as two minutes by simply analyzing a photo of one foot or hand and comparing it to the other. DeBord Smith’s application seeks to improve upon more commonly used tests, like a segmental doppler, and make identifying this very common disease easier for clinicians.

Wrapping up the session was Mark Zhang, DO, a Palliative Care consultant at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, whose project focused on end-of-life care planning. His online tool, called CAKE, allows people to answer questions that shed light on their end-of-life preferences, breaking the ice for difficult conversations.

Zhang calls it a “handbook for the end of life” that can make a potentially very difficult conversation a little easier.

Charles Czeisler

BWH researchers discussed recent novel findings in sleep medicine during this afternoon session. Frank Scheer, PhD, MSc, neuroscientist and director of BWH’s Medical Chronobiology Program, shared information about circadian rhythms and the timing of meals, which may help prevent physiological changes that put overnight workers more at risk for the development of diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease. Susan Redline, MD, MPH, program director in the BWH Division of Sleep and Cardiovascular Medicine, spoke about the high prevalence of sleep apnea, treatment options available to patients today and opportunities to improve screening, diagnosis and treatment with use of patient-centered research. Charles Czeisler, MD, PhD, chief of the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders, discussed our country’s sleep deficiency epidemic and why sleep is so crucial to good health. Czeisler said while we are all facing increased pressures to meet the demands of everyday life, we must ensure that we get adequate sleep (seven to nine hours per night for adults) in order for our bodies and our brains to perform at their best. New Yorker writer Maria Konnikova served as moderator.

The session, like many others of the day, drew a large crowd.

As our ability to monitor almost everything we do increases with wearables like FitBits and Apple Watches, technology companies and health care leaders alike are considering how the tremendous amount of data collected by these devices could be leveraged to improve health care delivery. During a panel discussion, BWHC Chief Medical Information Officer for Health Information, Innovation & Integration Adam Landman, MD, MS, MIS, MHS, noted that a great deal of analysis is still required. “We need real clinical trials to validate that these sensors measure what they say they are measuring, and we need to determine if they are of value in a clinical setting. That will require FDA approval and time.” He also emphasized that how the data is displayed to providers will be a key factor in whether it is useful to them. “We need ways to summarize the data and highlight what’s important, so that clinicians can quickly see and share this information with a patient during an appointment,” he said, noting that clinicians cannot comb through weeks’ worth of data to find the important points. Proper interface and display “will help make or break these tools for providers.” Boston Business Journal health care reporter Jessica Bartlett moderated.

Terrie Inder (left) and moderator Mallika Marshall

BWH has a long history of transforming health care for mothers and babies, from the 1832 founding of BWH predecessor hospital Boston Lying-In—one of America’s first maternity hospitals—up through the fascinating neurodevelopment research being explored by BWH’s Department of Pediatric Newborn Medicine (PNM) today. During an informative session on newborn health, PNM Chair Terrie Inder, MD, MBChB, shared how BWH is helping to build a better brain beginning with babies in utero, by focusing on different types of risks to the developing brain. From maternal obesity to infant congenital heart disease to the effects of pharmacological agents given to babies experiencing pain, BWH’s Sarbattama Sen, MD, Cynthia Ortinau, MD, and Christopher McPherson, PharmD, respectively, took attendees through the many factors that can impact a baby’s brain development before and after birth and later in life. Physician and WBZ-TV medical reporter Mallika Marshall, MD, moderated the session.

Jackie Somerville (left) and Susan Gennaro

The sixth annual BWH Haley Nursing Forum celebrated innovative nursing research taking place at BWH. Jackie Somerville, PhD, RN, chief nursing officer and senior vice president of Patient Care Services, and Susan Gennaro, PhD, RN, FAAN, dean and professor of the William F. Connell School of Nursing at Boston College, talked about the Haley Nurse Scientist program, a collaboration between the two institutions that is designed to advance nursing science through research. Three Haley Nurse Scientists gave overviews of their work. Katherine Gregory, PhD, RN, spoke about her investigation of the gut microbiome and its impact on newborn health; Patricia Dykes, PhD, RN, detailed her work enhancing patient engagement and communication around safety measures, such as fall prevention; and Lichuan Ye, PhD, RN, spoke about her research on sleep promotion in the hospital setting.

Oren Levy

From contact lenses to dental fillings to sutures, bioengineering materials are everywhere. The discovery and improvement of biomaterials have the potential to offer major advances in the treatment of patients. Following an engaging history of the field of bioengineering, Jeff Karp, PhD, introduced speakers who are advancing approaches with industry to usher in new therapies for patients. Natalie Artzi, PhD, presented her work on developing disease-responsive and disease-selective biomaterials that can be delivered locally to treat cancer. Aaron Goldman, PhD, spoke about computational approaches that can improve treatment regimens for breast cancer, and Oren Levy, PhD, discussed designing therapeutic stem cell “ninjas” that can zoom in on the right place at the right time to treat diseases like multiple sclerosis and prostate cancer. Health and science reporter Megan Scudellari later led a lively discussion about how bioengineering is perceived as a hot topic in the media and one that captures the public’s imagination.