Healthcare systems researchers gathered at the ISE Department last week to discover one of the newest tools in personalized medicine, agent-based modeling.
ISE Professor Maria Mayorga helped sponsor the “Agent Based Modeling Boot-camp for Health Researchers”. Her co-sponsor was Dr. Kristen Hassmiller Lich from the Gillings School of Global Public Health. The instructor for the five day boot camp was Dr. Nathaniel Osgood, an expert in ABM.
ABM is a powerful new tool for researchers interested in personalized medicine. It is a simulation technique that models individual agents and their interactions their environment. ABM allows for detailed, cross-sectional views of a population’s health.
Putting Learning into Practice
Some of Dr. Mayorga’s PhD students have already started using ABM in research. David Cornejo is using it to model colorectal cancer screenings. Rodrigo De la Fuente developed a diabetes model and Shadi Hassani Goodarzi has decided to build a model for DCIS. Rachel Townsley has started to model comorbidities assoiated with smoking and smoking cessation.