Health

Transforming innovative technologies to advance the understanding of human diseases and to improve the health and well being of Australians.

NICTA R&D capabilities in Health are focused in four key themes:

Bioinformatics
Medical devices
Biomedical informatics
eHealth

These themes reflect the global biological revolution currently taking place, popularly referred to as the "new biology". This discipline transformation is very well articulated in A New Biology for the 21st Century published by the American National Academy of Science (ISBN-10: 0-309-14488-4). In essence, the belief is that new discoveries, innovations and biotechnologies will come about by the fusion of disciplines like Mathematics, Computer Science, Electrical & Electronic Engineering with Biology and Medicine. NICTA's mandate is to make these disciplines relevant to modern society, through both the public and the private sectors, thus aligning our strategy with this global revolution. For the Health Business Area of NICTA, such convergence is occurring at the genetic, cellular, person and organisational levels of Health in our four research target areas.

Bioinformatics

Our work in this area is focused on the genetic and cellular levels of analysis via five specific programs. Namely:

Computational genomics:

Assembling, summarising and delineating genetic information must occur before we can understand its role in biology and medicine. Consequently, the computational genomics team, working with colleagues from Melbourne and Monash universities, research institutes, including the CSIRO and Victorian Life Sciences Computational Institute (VLSCI), have developed new efficient methods for genome assembly and unmixing, along with novel ways in which these technologies can be used for both human (prostate cancer) and animal studies. One notable software product is GOSSAMER.

Diagnostic genomics:

One aspect towards our vision for personalised medicine is that knowledge of the genetic disposition for disease, and the types of specific drugs that would best apply to a patient to fight a known disease, will revolutionise medical practice. However, the key to this involves being able to determine what genes, and their interactions, express such signatures. Our Diagnostic Genomics team, working in close partnership with university and institute colleagues, are focussed on how such gene expressions for breast and prostate cancer can be derived by using statistical and computational models given known genome-wide studies. Funded by a number of NHMRC grants, this team works with colleagues from the University of Melbourne, Peter Mac Cancer Institute and the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI). One challenge is to model and extract relevant gene interactions to improve detection of specific cancers.

Image analytics:

The collection and storage of medical and biological images has increased exponentially over the past decade due to new types of imaging devices along with processing and storage technologies. Many institutions, such as WEHI, have created laboratories with dedicated platform technologies to help researchers collect, analyse and store such data. Our Image Analytics team is working with WEHI, IBM and university partners in efforts to support the development of Biological Imaging Platform Technologies. Current work focuses on cell segmentation, tracking and metrology applied to Malaria, the general immune response and general medical imaging, including NIR Brain Imaging in our Canberra Research Laboratory.

In silica immunology:

This project focuses on bringing together Biological Imaging with Systems & Computational Biology. The core aim of this work is to build a useful simulation and prediction platform for the immune response to specific diseases. Based upon models for cell death, division at the population and individual level - and binding such models with imaging algorithms will allow users to process and interpret cellular information in more objective, efficient and insightful ways. This work is driven by a tight partnership with WEHI under the leadership of Professor Phillip Hodgkin, WEHI, and senior NICTA researchers.

Medical Devices

The "person" level of NICTA's Health research and development involves bringing together NICTA's expertise in Microelectronics, Signal Processing, Pattern Recognition and Wireless Communications to build devices that can measure, monitor and aide patients in varied environments and situations. Our four programs address different modalities. Namely:

Assistive bionics:

Refers to the modelling of sensory-motor functions and the development of new devices that optimise the use of computer-based sensing, data interpretation and control with the actual device.

Biomedical devices & signal processing:

This program covers the development of wireless 3D kinetic sensors for the measurement and monitoring of patients in clinics, at home or most normal environments. Current work involves the monitoring of Parkinson patients but the applications are very broad and apply to the aged, home care and even rehabilitation.

Bionic eye:

This program involves the development of implant electrodes for spinal and retinal stimulation to manage pain and contribute to sight restoration. The latter is part of a larger Australian Research Council (ARC) Bionic Vision Australia (BVA) grant.

Implant systems

BioMedical Informatics

With so much health data now being collected and stored electronically there are huge opportunities to provide new types of services, new innovations from health research to healthcare via Biomedical Informatics. Our team in NICTA works on a variety of underlying technologies including clustering, pattern recognition, natural language processing and general data mining to query, summarise and discover relationships between biomedical datasets. Research applies to areas such as drug design where there is a need to discover how past findings in Pharmacology and Genomics relate to new drug design and patient therapies. Two programs operate within this theme:

BioMedical informatics

Personalised medicine & decision support

eHealth

NICTA's Canberra Research Laboratory has a focus on the use of Machine Learning to utilise the resources available over eHealth media. With projects in the Northern Territory related to tele-health, the analysis of hospital admission information to derive admission predictions, this team is focused on advanced data mining and statistical modelling methods.

For further information, contact:

Dr. Jia-Yee Lee

Director, Health Business Area

NICTA Victoria Research Laboratory

Jia-Yee.Lee@nicta.com.au, Phone +61 3 8344 4923

Professor Terry Caelli, FIEEE, FIAPR

Technical Director, Health Business Area