Each month, Look Who’s Talking features voices from across BWH answering the same question. This month, we are asking, “How has the new Building for Transformative Medicine helped you to advance care for patients?” We’ve heard that the BTM is bringing patients, clinicians and scientists together to advance care – can you think of a specific example that you’ve seen in the new building?

“The BTM is a shining icon, a symbol of how the Brigham is really essentially different.  We are committed to breaking down the artificial barriers and working together to make real progress against the greatest sources of human suffering:  paralysis, pain, cognitive failure and many more.  These are daunting problems but everyone in the world is depending on us to make headway.” [Read more]

-Martin Samuels, MD, Chair, Department of Neurology, Director, Brigham and Women’s Institute for the Neurosciences

“I feel very privileged to work in this cutting edge facility. Just walking into the building I feel empowered to work and make a difference. The best thing about being here is that the opportunities are endless. I have seen it every day and heard about it from the postdocs in my lab; just by seating in one of the lounging areas they have been able to meet and network with other professionals and start collaborations targeted to the advancement of patient care. At BTM, you have amazing scientist and clinicians all in one building and the access to state of the arts equipment and resources. I believe that this is a major key to advance patient care in our community.”

-Laura Badia, MSM, Lab Manager, The Laboratory for Advanced Biomaterials and Stem-Cell-Based Therapeutics (Karp Lab)

“The Imaging Center in the new BTM has advanced care for Neuroscience, Orthopaedic and Rheumatology patients by allowing for enhanced integration of imaging into the clinic visits. This is not only through state of the art imaging resources, but also due to the close proximity and actual ’embedding’ of radiologists into the clinic environments. The installation of the 7 Tesla scanner in the near future will result in a quantum leap in our ability to help make difficult diagnoses in many of our complex neuroscience patients as well, and will hopefully lead to enhanced ability to monitor treatments.”

-Srinivasan Mukundan, Jr., PhD, MD, Director of Neuroradiology

“The clinical studies I am working on require collaboration with clinicians across different disciplines within rheumatology. The close proximity of the clinicians facilitates recruitment and subject enrollment. In addition, the collaborative, intellectual endeavors are more easily realized given the closer proximity.”

-Elena Massarotti, MD, Division of Rheumatology, Immunology and Allergy

“Bone marrow derived stem cell biology is a growing research field in regenerative medicine and has broad clinical implications for treating patients with orthopaedic conditions.  At the BTM, where our Orthopaedic faculty evaluate patients that need joint replacement surgery, our researchers are able to coordinate the timing for their surgeries to harvest the normally discarded bone specimens (e.g. during hip replacement surgery).  The surgical bone specimens are then processed to extract the marrow derived stem cells for various studies in bone biology as well as in a variety of tissue engineering for applications.  The BTM allows for us to carry out these important basic science studies seamlessly so we can one day discover innovative therapies to treat patients into the future.”

-James Kang, MD, Chair, Orthopaedic Surgery

“The BTM has a great “water-cooler” effect: inviting spaces with comfortable seating and whiteboards are convenient for ad hoc team meetings and brainstorming, and people frequently stop by our office on the way to the conference center or research lab. Our most direct link to patients is our iHub Speaker Series which we have every month to encourage and facilitate discussion around digital health innovation. Our primary audience is the startup community and business schools but Brigham patients are more than welcome to attend. The public spaces in the BTM are perfect for this public series of events, and so far we have hosted guest speakers such as the Chief Medical Officer of Samsung and Chief Digital Health Officer of Boston Scientific.”

-Brian Mullen, Innovation Strategy Manager, Brigham Innovation Hub

“The BTM has enabled me to see my patients with Alzheimer’s disease on the 1st floor, obtain samples from them, and transport the samples directly to our state-of the-art research laboratory on the 10th floor.  Moreover, the building has already fostered numerous conversations, seminars and collaborations that might otherwise not have occurred.  It is a wonderful place for “collisions of collaboration”.

-Dennis Selkoe, MD, Co-Director, Center for Neurologic Diseases, Department  of Neurology