Boston Children's Hospital offers 9 innovations to watch in 2016

Clinical, digital and business leaders from around Boston Children’s Hospital offered their forecasts for the science and clinical innovations that will have the biggest impact on healthcare in 2016.

Here are the nine innovations named:

1. Our quantified brains

“2016 will see more work on brain differences from individual to individual, and even from day to day in a single person,” according to Nadine Gaab, PhD, Developmental Medicine Research.

2. Growth of the ‘internet of healthcare’

“The convergence of consumers’ increasing awareness of their health and their ever-connected devices has given rise to a more portable, proactive form of healthcare,” according to Nitin Gujral, BS, software development manager, Innovation and Digital Health Accelerator.

Diagnostic mobile apps and devices and decision support apps, as well as home connectivity hubs and social robots will begin to be used for intuitive healthcare delivery. Gujral also predicts that the prescription of mobile apps and devices to patients to manage their care will become the norm in 2016.

3. Patient-enabled record sharing, through apps

The upcoming application programming interface (API) standard FHIR will allow patients to enable any authorized third-party health app to connect to their EHRs and provide a value-added service, says Gajen Sunthara, BSc, MS, director, Innovation R&D, Innovation and Digital Health Accelerator. Through HIPAA, patients will have the right to access their health records and to be the center/mediator for sharing these records for medical and research purposes.

4. Bringing meaning to user-generated Big Data

Much work remains to find meaning in the large amount of data collected from wearable and mobile devices, according to Jared Hawkins, MMSc, PhD, director of informatics, Innovation and Digital Health Accelerator; faculty, Computational Health Informatics Program (CHIP). The development of sophisticated machine learning algorithms can link information and flag patterns leading to better use of user-generated data.

5. The microbiome arrives

Next-generation sequencing will escalate as startups and academic institutes vie for microbiome scientists, according to Jane Amara, PhD, associate director, Technology and Innovation Development Office.


6. Clinical trials in a dish

There will be more use of stem cells as an aid to therapeutic discovery, according to Clifford Woolf, MB, BCh, PhD, Director, F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center. The first ALS clinical trial where patients will have stem cell lines made for their disease and treatment response characterized is already underway.

7. Deep brain stimulation moves into pediatrics

The ability to normalize malfunctioning brain circuits through targeted electrical stimulation has advanced tremendously and expanded to several new diseases, says Scellig Stone, MD, PhD, director, Deep Brain Stimulation program. Next-generation devices can both sense and respond to brain activity. Along with greater understanding of brain development and function, the ability to alter the course of disease earlier will drive the use of deep brain stimulation.

8. Noninvasive brain stimulation in epilepsy, autism

Discoveries will continue in the basic mechanisms of neurostimulation, particularly in applications related to epilepsy, according to Joseph Madsen, MD, director of epilepsy surgery.

9. Genetics informing therapy

Precision medicine will have a big impact on pediatric healthcare, says Vijay Sankaran, MD, PhD, Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center. Studies already have demonstrated the value of using genetic approaches to identify disease etiology. And, genetic insight into disorders can lead to new therapies.