The MIT Center for Biomedical Innovation is joining the Engineering Systems Division as one of its numerous research initiatives, allowing ESD and CBI to more closely align their efforts in tackling large-scale challenges in the healthcare industry.
"Re-engineering key elements of our healthcare system has become a national imperative," said Claude Canizares, chair of CBI's Strategy & Policy Council. "Working within ESD will give CBI the opportunity to leverage the combination of ESD's world-class expertise in engineering systems with CBI's deep knowledge of, and experience in, the healthcare industry."
Launched in 2005 in collaboration with MIT's schools of engineering, science, and management, as well as the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, CBI works closely with representatives from industry and government to identify major healthcare challenges that MIT can address through research. CBI's research areas include safety assessment; manufacturing and distribution systems; economic, financial, and regulatory risk management; and research and development redesign.
ESD's research integrates aspects of engineering, management, and social sciences. ESD research domains focus on critical infrastructures, extended enterprises, healthcare, and energy and sustainability. The division encompasses a number of large scale research initiatives, including the MIT Portugal Program, the Lean Advancement Initiative, the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, and the Systems Advancement Research Initiative. In addition, it houses several educational programs at the graduate level.
"Like CBI, ESD incorporates interdisciplinary perspectives to address complex, real-world challenges," said ESD Director Yossi Sheffi. "This partnership will help build ESD's capabilities in the domain of healthcare."
Several ESD faculty members are currently involved in CBI's research programs. CBI's Drug Safety Research Program focuses on improving safety surveillance for drugs recently approved by the FDA for launch into the market. Specific priorities in this program are to develop a holistic benefit-risk management framework, as well as to develop improved methods for data extraction, signal detection and validation, and benefit-risk assessment and communication.
CBI's Biomanufacturing Program (BioMAN) aims to develop innovative technologies that significantly reduce the cost of manufacturing processes and improve the ability to deliver safe, high-quality biopharmaceutical products. The program's focus is on developing new technologies for bioprocessing, understanding the economic implications of new innovations, and developing tools that assess the strategic, business, and safety implications of globalization of this industry.
"This formalized partnership will build on already existing faculty interactions," said CBI Faculty Director Anthony Sinskey, "creating more opportunities for collaborations in the pursuit of optimizing biomedical innovation."
About the Engineering Systems Division
ESD aims to solve complex engineering systems problems by integrating approaches based on engineering, management, and social sciences--using new framing and modeling methodologies. ESD seeks to facilitate the beneficial application of engineering systems principles and properties by expanding the set of problems addressed by engineers, and to position its graduates as tomorrow's system thinkers and leaders in tackling society's challenges. ESD is an interdisciplinary academic unit that spans most departments within the School of Engineering, as well as all five schools at MIT. Visit esd.mit.edu.
About the Center for Biomedical Innovation
CBI's mission is to improve global health by overcoming obstacles to the development and implementation of biomedical innovation. CBI provides a safe haven for collaborative research among industry, academia, and government, and draws on the expertise of MIT's schools of engineering, science, and management, as well as the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST). Visit web.mit.edu/cbi.
