Tammie Dudley wrote:
> Departmental Colloquium Announcement
> ----------------------------------------------
> Title: Splash: A Computational Platform for Collaborating to Solve 
> Complex Health Problems
> Speakers: Paul P. Maglio and Cheryl A. Kieliszewski IBM Research - 
> Almaden
> Date: Thursday, April 14, 2011
> Time: 2:00pm - 3:30pm
> Location: 34 Peachtree Street, 14th Floor Conference room
>
> --------------------
> Abstract
> The Smarter Planet Platform for Analysis and Simulation of Health 
> (Splash) is a novel computational framework for integrating 
> independent data, models, and simulations to create comprehensive 
> system models for understanding individual and population health at 
> multiple scales and for multiple purposes. Health results from complex 
> interactions among many distinct human, environment, and social 
> systems, such as cultural, educational, political, and economic 
> conditions, as well as policies, practices, costs, and pricing in 
> industries as diverse as advertising, transportation, agriculture, and 
> others. Interventions and policies aimed at improving population 
> health by affecting one system may have serious and unanticipated 
> consequences in another. Chronic conditions such as obesity have 
> resisted medical, behavioral, and policy interventions that touch a 
> single system, for instance solely at the level of biology, 
> psychology, community, built environment, economic investment, or 
> public policy. We do not always think through the interactions among 
> such systems. It is difficult to do. It requires cross-domain thinking 
> and systems thinking, and also careful collaboration among experts in 
> different domains to explore complex interdependencies among the 
> operation of the real-world systems each expert knows best. This is 
> where Splash can help—by supporting collaborations among those with 
> health-related data, models, and problems through an open 
> systems-based platform capable of integrating disparate data, models, 
> and simulations, each representing parts of the broader health system. 
> The goal is to create an interoperating complex composite system model 
> supporting what-if analyses by policy makers. In this talk, we will 
> outline the overall vision of Splash and describe our progress so far, 
> focusing on a proof-of-concept demo that combines four models and 
> several datasets to examine alternative policies to reduce population 
> obesity in a hypothetical community. We will discuss our experiences, 
> lessons learned, and ongoing challenges.
>
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>