For the past year, the Undiagnosed production team has been working with Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical on launching a “diagnostic challenge” for the 5 patients whose medical mysteries the film has been documenting.
In a dream now becoming reality, some of the world’s best medical minds will soon be participating in this challenge! 30 teams of specialists from around the globe will to try to diagnose these patients by analyzing each of their family’s newly sequenced genetic information and health records.
“We know that medicine is rife with misdiagnoses or late diagnoses, and long-term undiagnosed cases illustrate this problem most acutely,” says CLARITY co-organizer Isaac Kohane, MD, PhD, professor of pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital and inaugural chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics. “The CLARITY Challenge will illuminate how properly aligned teams with genomics, informatics and clinical experts can advance the diagnostic art.”
What does this mean for the movie?
In addition to bringing to light a profoundly underestimated healthcare issue, Undiagnosed will be documenting the CLARITY Challenge to show how modern technology and collaborative medicine can be game-changers not only for undiagnosed patients, but also for the future of medicine.
A HUGE thank-you to Illumina for their incredibly generous donation of the clinical whole-genome sequencing, analysis, and expert consultation for the patients and family members!
The CLARITY Undiagnosed Challenge will launch on July 13th. Research teams have until June 11th to apply to compete. For more information visit www.bostonchildrens.org/
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