100+ Mass General Brigham Leading Experts Identify Top Unmet Needs in Healthcare
Project from Harvard Medical School-affiliated clinicians
and scientists in the Mass General Brigham healthcare system stimulates new
consideration, urgency regarding innovation in life sciences, healthcare
Top 10 List Announced at World Medical Innovation Forum
BOSTON, MA September 25, 2024 – Some of the most vexing
challenges and transformational opportunities in healthcare are included in a
new list, “Top Unmet Needs in Healthcare” released by leading experts at Mass
General Brigham. Identified by more than 100 Harvard Medical School faculty at
Mass General Brigham, the findings range from the need to expand and accelerate
rare disease treatment, to the coming “gray tsunami” of aging patients and the
implications for patient care, delivery, and technology. The project, revealed
at the 10th annual World Medical Innovation Forum, is meant to stimulate new
consideration and urgency regarding solving and advancing these issues for
improved patient care.
Views from Leading Clinicians, Researchers, and
Practitioners in Academic Medicine
The Top Unmet Needs emerge from structured one-on-one
discussions with more than 100 Harvard faculty who practice medicine and
conduct research at Mass General Brigham, the largest hospital system-based
research enterprise in the U.S., with an annual research budget exceeding $2
billion, and five of the nation’s top hospitals according to US News &
World Report.
Through one-on-one discussions with these key opinion
leaders from diverse clinical and research fields, and subsequent analyses by
internal teams of experts, Mass General Brigham has identified the following
top 10 unmet clinical needs:
#1. Preparing for the ‘Gray Tsunami’
The need for better tools and therapies aimed at caring for
geriatric populations and maintaining geriatric independence, with a particular
focus on expanded hospital-at-home capabilities, and the need to better
understand the pathways that lead to chronic and acute disease in geriatric
patients to enable better and more proactive treatment.
#2. Defining and Maintaining Brain Health
The need for a model of brain health and neurological care
that clearly defines not only what brain health is but also integrates our
current understanding of the mechanisms and phases of neuroinflammatory and
neurodegenerative diseases; enables better and earlier diagnoses and treatment;
and propels the development of therapies that target these mechanisms and
phases.
#3. A Paradigm Shift in Cancer Treatment
The need for a new framework for therapeutic development in
cancer that is focused on improving curability as opposed to an exclusive focus
on the development of drugs for metastatic disease. This framework also
requires effective tools for early-stage cancer detection across the board in
all cancers, but especially in lung, ovarian, pancreatic, and GI cancers
(esophagus, stomach and colon).
#4. Targeting Fibrosis, a Shared Culprit in Disease
The need for therapeutics that target fibrosis (tissue
scarring), which is responsible for a significant percentage of deaths
worldwide, representing diseases of the lung, liver, kidney, heart, and skin.
#5. New Approaches
for Infectious Disease in a Changing World
The need for novel strategies for the rapid diagnoses,
treatment, and even prevention of antibioticresistant infections, and the need
for the next generation of globally deployable vaccines to enable pandemic
preparedness.
#6. Striving for Equity in Healthcare
The need to radically rethink how, when, and where patients
interact with healthcare services to optimize healthcare access and efficiency
without diminishing its effectiveness, and to proactively meet the needs of
currently underserved populations.
#7. Riding the Wave of Clinical Data
The need to expand
the scope of available clinical data to include historically understudied
populations (including women) and to model and implement a cohesive, dynamic
data "stream," which flows as patients do between the different
phases of health and clinical care, enabling comparisons of patients to their
previously healthy selves and the development of AI/ML approaches to harness
these data to improve diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment.
#8. A Systems-Level View of Human Disease
The need to rethink how we understand and treat disease —
not only from an organ-specific standpoint but from a whole-body, systems-level
view — and to fully elucidate the roles that inflammation and immune pathways
play in autoimmune and infectious diseases and their effects on chronic and
acute diseases in diverse human systems, such as the cardiovascular/circulatory
and nervous systems.
#9. A New Approach to Psychiatric Disease
The need for novel treatments for psychiatric disease,
improved biomarkers and minimally invasive and ambulatory ways of measuring
them, and more productive interactions with industry to advance new therapies
to the clinic. This includes hybrid therapies (therapies that combine elements
such as talk therapy, novel biomarkers, and pharmacological treatments) as well
as new diagnostic and treatment modalities, such as psychedelic therapeutics
and precision psychiatry.
#10. Charting a Course in Rare Disease Treatment
The need for viable treatments for the 7,000 identified rare
diseases, especially the roughly 70% of such diseases that are genetic and the
effects of which are first observed in early childhood.
The Unmet Needs list also include the following honorable
mentions which rose to significant rankings in the analysis:
• Driving Innovation in Chronic Disease: Improved
Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prevention
• A New Era of Obesity Medicine
• A New Generation of Pain Treatments
• Unlocking Novel Treatments for the Skin
Overarching Themes
Addressing unmet
clinical needs involves solving a number of common challenges, including
commercialization hurdles, regulatory considerations, and funding. The Mass
General Brigham project identified overarching themes to help address these
challenges and support innovation across multiple sectors. These include:
• Taking a systems view of human disease and the practice
of system-medicine
• Developing a global view of infectious disease,
including antimicrobial resistance
• An expansion in high-quality, real-world data that
closes gaps in current data (particularly for women and other underserved
populations) and ensures that data sets are sufficiently enabling for AI/ML
• Improving health and healthcare across key populations,
including geriatrics and rare genetic disease
• Addressing major diseases of the brain, including both
neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric conditions; these include Alzheimer’s
disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, as well as psychiatric and mental health
disorders
• Opening an era of precision medicine across disease
areas that includes early diagnosis, treating staged disease, and biomarker
discovery and utilization
Panel co-chairs José Florez, Physician-in-Chief and Co-Chair
of the MGB Department of Medicine and the Jackson Professor of Clinical
Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Bruce Levy, Physician-In-Chief and
Co-Chair of the MGB Department of Medicine and the Parker B. Francis Professor
of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, noted how the observations of a broad
and representative set of faculty help illuminate the innovation landscape
ahead.
“As a leader in patient care and healthcare innovation, our
goal is to build on the legacy of research and discovery that has shaped the
hospitals of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system for more than a hundred
years, and continue to bring breakthroughs forward that can help solve pressing
needs,” said Dr. Florez.
Dr. Levy added that “This is a roadmap for the future that
can inform discussions happening throughout the healthcare and investment
ecosystem regarding the future of medicine.”
More than 2000 decision-makers from healthcare, industry,
finance and government attended the World Medical Innovation Forum this week in
Boston. A premier global event, the Forum highlights leading innovations in
medicine and transformative advancements in patient care.
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