Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/646815
t m c » p u l s e | m a r c h 2 0 1 6 26 Also, let's not forget the people of Houston and the people of Texas—the people and the populations we proudly serve. First, they are as generous as can be, and we should all thank the philan- thropic community. Second, we should cherish and encourage diversity in our community. We have enormous ethnic diversity in Texas, but Houston in par- ticular. In some ways, it is a window to what the United States is going to look like in 2050. We are really laying the foundation for medicine of the future by understanding the role of genetic diversity and the impact of disease in different populations. There is no better living laboratory, if you will, than Houston, Texas, for genomics and precision medicine. These are the tools of the future to reduce health disparities. Q | What excites you most about the future standard of care, as genomics plays a greater role in medicine? A | Having the sequence of every patient that comes to the Texas Medical Center—making it so routine that frankly we take it for granted that we have this information as a foundation of the electronic health record. We sequence these individuals at a young age and integrate that information into the electronic health record, which will then follow them through life. The information may be used in infants to understand congenital heart defects, in toddlers to understand allergies, in teenagers to understand propensity to high-risk behaviors, in young adults to understand the risk of developing diabetes in heart disease, and in the elderly to prevent the occurrence of Alzheimer's disease and dementia. It sounds like science fiction, but I can assure you it is not science fiction. We are rapidly getting to that point, and this is the right place to do it. Again, collaboration is key. Heart disease patients get cancer, and cancer patients get heart disease. We are living with these diseases now as chronic conditions. That DNA sequence, which is now a part of the person's electronic health record, will follow the patient between hospitals. Interoperability of the electronic health record in the Texas Medical Center is one key to our future success. I would like to pause here and make one other point. We need to make sure that the benefits of genomics is not just for the rich and the rarefied. We need to make sure we get it to all of the people. Partnerships with Harris Health and the VA system will be critical. Q | We are in the process of developing the TMC Genomics Institute. Why is this important? A | I love building bridges among these institutions and I have seen the good that comes from it. It has been It has been said that these institutions have grown and achieved prominence based on competi- tion; we are going to continue to grow and achieve greatness based on cooperation. said that these institutions have grown and achieved prominence based on competition; we are going to continue to grow and achieve greatness based on cooperation. I think that's an import- ant point for all of us to remember. My competition is not with Baylor and MD Anderson; it is with Boston and San Francisco. And I really believe that cooperation is the way we are going to continue to grow and place the third coast, the Gulf Coast, on the map of enviable biomedical research and translation hubs. Going back to the philanthropic community of Houston, they are going to appreciate and reward such cooperation. Q | How important is it to have co-location of all of these great minds? A | It is incredibly important. It is important to have people in a more casual setting, in a routine setting to share ideas and to plan next steps. Building a large program is an interest- ing combination of having individuals that have a real vision, but also have the ability to translate that vision into a series of very concrete steps to accomplish it. You get to the level that we work in, and there are a lot of really good ideas. There are very few people that have the sort of engineering approach to take those visions and set down a series of very concrete steps to accomplish that vision. It is a lot of hard work. And fortunately, in the genetics initiative, we have brought together a group of people who not only can work together and articulate a vision, but also have the experience of really doing the systems engineering—what Andy Futreal at MD Anderson calls the 'plumbing'—to pull this together and accomplish the vision. And having individuals together in close proximity, we can really refine that vision and do the plumbing and the hard work. And that takes me back to the beginning. One of the things about growing up in a rural setting is you respect people; you respect people no matter who they are, and also you aren't afraid of hard work. And a lot can be said there.