July 26, 2002

Duke University Medical Center, BioSignia Team Up for Year-Long Study to Test Effectiveness of Intensive “Strategic Health Planning” in Patient Care


BioSignia’s Know Your Number® Tapped as Study’s Primary Outcomes Variable

Research Triangle Park, NC – BioSignia, Inc. has signed a contract with Duke University Medical Center to participate in a 12-month study Duke has designed to test the effectiveness of a comprehensive, integrated program of medical care designed to teach patients how to become more assertive about maintaining good health.
The randomized controlled trial will incorporate a wide range of medical as well as psychological and social information from some 200 patient volunteers who will be divided into two groups, an intervention group and a control group.

The intervention group will receive a comprehensive program of patient care called “strategic health planning, ” which combines education and medical interventions designed to teach patients how to stay healthy. The control group will receive traditional health care but without the strategic health planning elements.

BioSignia will provide the statistical modeling that allows researchers to access and analyze massive amounts of disparate data that is used then to draw insights about appropriate care for individuals.

"We’re thrilled to be involved in this very important work in the field of integrated medicine,” said Leila Russell, director of customer relations with BioSignia, Inc. “We believe people have a better chance to improve their health if they understand their individual risk, and Know Your Number is a powerful system for assessing risk, preventing illness and assisting in treatment decisions.”

Patients receiving strategic health planning will get, in addition to traditional medical care, close, one-on-one attention from a physician as well as a “trained health care coach,” who will help the patient choose specific strategies to help lower his or her risk of developing certain diseases. Periodic visits and follow-up phone calls between patient and coach as well as group meetings to discuss issues like weight-loss, exercise and smoking cessation will be used to monitor and measure specific gains toward achieving goals.

Patients in the control group will receive traditional medical attention without specific strategic health planning or access to a health care coach or special groups.

“People must be engaged in a sustained effort to improve and then maintain good health,” said Dr. Oddone, Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at Duke University Medical Center. “We’ve developed a program of strategic health planning and we’re trying to accurately measure what actually works to help patients realize their risk of disease and achieve better overall health.”

Using data provided by Duke, BioSignia will provide health risk assessment modeling for each patient, using its proprietary Know Your Number modeling technology.  At the end of the study BioSignia will provide a quantitative assessment on each patient of his or her cardiovascular and cerebrovascular risk within five years.

BioSignia, Inc. pioneered evidence-based technology for assessing, at the individual level, the likelihood of onset of specific diseases such as stroke, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.  BioSignia’s patented technology platform – Synthesis Analysis -- provides a precise predictive profile of an individual’s risk based on the individual's unique biological chemistry and medical history, and illustrates how much his or her risk can be lowered.

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