The Digital Medicine Society (DiMe) has launched as a nonprofit professional society to support the development of digital medicine through interdisciplinary collaboration, research, teaching and the promotion of best practices.
Boston-based DiMe said its members would have a variety of ways to influence the research agenda and participate in inter-disciplinary workgroups, such as defining requirements for verification and validation processes and developing consensus recommendations on ethics in digital medicine. In addition, members have access to live webinars and workshops, collaborative and communications platforms, careers services, and discounts with DiMe partner organizations.
"Cross-discipline cooperative networks are needed to unlock the full potential of digital medicine to improve human health," said DiMe Executive Director Jennifer Goldsack, in a prepared statement. "DiMe provides the only professional home for individuals across digital medicine—from regulators to white-hat hackers, ethicists to engineers, and clinicians to citizen scientists. We look forward to welcoming a diverse membership to DiMe and, together, driving scientific progress and broad acceptance of digital medicine to enhance public health."
Andy Coravos, the CEO and co-founder of Elektra Labs, and a member of the Harvard-MIT Center for Regulatory Science, and Bray Patrick-Lake, the director of stakeholder engagement and the Research Together program lead at Duke Clinical Research Institute, co-authored a blog post on the Duke Forge website describing why they got involved with DiME. (Both are on the scientific leadership board.) Noting that professional societies such as the American College of Cardiology have traditionally provided a professional home to experts in their respective fields, they wrote that it’s reasonable to ask: where is the professional home for those who practice digital medicine? They noted that DiMe is focused on three key priorities: building a high-quality evidence base for digital medicine; overcoming fragmentation of effort and lack of alignment; and breaking down the barriers that tend to confine technical and methodological progress to isolated silos. “Today it is more important than ever to self-organize across multiple partners to create cohesive visions to build an interoperable, safe, effective, and ethical health care system. DiMe is positioned to serve as a driver in that organizing process,” they wrote.
In another statement on the DiME website, Edmondo Robinson, chief transformation officer at Christiana Care Health System in Delaware, said, "DiMe is championing digital medicine as an evidence-based field. By convening experts and providing the infrastructure for evidence development, it will help clinical decision-makers and end users better identify digital tools that are safe and effective for patients."
