Announcing Johns Hopkins inHealth

Dear Johns Hopkins Colleagues,

At Johns Hopkins, we move the quality of health care forward every day. But today, we announce a signature effort that has the potential to improve health care and become a model for a more effective health system for the nation.

The Johns Hopkins Individualized Health Initiative—Johns Hopkins inHealth—aims to develop and implement novel methods and tools to intelligently use information to individualize wellness, early disease detection, and more effective and affordable treatment.

Johns Hopkins inHealth was formulated by an interdisciplinary group representing the academic divisions of The Johns Hopkins University, the University’s Applied Physics Laboratory and the Johns Hopkins Health System. It has worked for the past 18 months with internal and external experts to shape a comprehensive plan to discover and implement information tools that enable better measurement of the current health of our members and patients, and better guidance of their trajectories, taking account of their individual characteristics and circumstances.

This unique collaboration has already received generous start-up support from the President’s Office and from Edward D. Miller, dean of the School of Medicine and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine; Ronald R. Peterson, president of The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System and executive vice president of Johns Hopkins Medicine; Michael Klag, dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health; Nicholas P. Jones, dean of the Whiting School of Engineering; and Ralph Semmel, director of the Applied Physics Laboratory. They will form the inHealth Oversight Committee, chaired by the provost.

We are delighted that Scott Zeger, professor of biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has agreed to be the initiative’s inaugural director. With support of the Steering and Oversight Committees, he will oversee the creation and evolution of this initiative. A search for a new vice provost for research to replace Scott will begin shortly.

We recognize that hundreds of professionals in the Johns Hopkins community are pursuing related goals. Johns Hopkins inHealth will work to promote and encourage innovative collaborations among those critical activities and the many talented Johns Hopkins faculty, scientists, engineers, students and staff who strive to make world-class, affordable health a reality for 21st century Americans.

For more information, visit the Johns Hopkins inHealth website at www.jhu.edu/provost/ihi.

Sincerely,

Ronald J. Daniels and Lloyd B. Minor