the pursuit of parkinson's - The University of Alabama at Birmingham

Alumni Profile
Alumni Profile: Stephen Brossette, M.D., Ph.D.
By Sandra Bearden
Stephen Brossette, M.D., Ph.D., is less than five years out of the
University of Alabama School of Medicine. Yet he may already have saved
hundreds of lives through his work—and this work has just begun.
The 32-year-old New Orleans native
(UASOM ’99) is founder and chief executive
officer of MedMined, Inc., a Birminghambased
business on the fast track among the
nation’s health-care IT companies. Employing
artificial intelligence in tandem with laboratory
and hospital databases, MedMined unveils
patterns in health-care data. Linked, the patterns
can provide clues to the origins of hospital-acquired
infections. In 2002, this pioneering
technology landed Brossette a spot on the
MIT Technology Review’s list of the world’s top
100 young innovators. In addition,
MedMined was named 2002 Technology
Company of the Year by the National Business
Incubation Association.
The honors and media coverage the company
has received underscore the seriousness of
the problem MedMined is combating. In 1995,
hospital infections caused 88,000 deaths in the
United States, the fourth leading cause of death
behind heart disease, cancer, and strokes.
“These infections are a big, expensive problem,”
Brossette says. “They make a lot of people
sick and kill some of them. Patients lose.
Hospitals lose. Insurers lose.”
MedMined applies sophisticated computer
algorithms and techniques to sift through vast
amounts of data. Medical personnel use
results from this “data mining” to detect early
warning signs of infection and to prevent or
control outbreaks.
Brossette first learned about data mining
when he was a student in UASOM’s Medical
Scientist Training Program (MSTP), working
concurrently on an M.D. and a Ph.D. in computer
science. A physics major whose undergraduate
work was in computational analysis,
Brossette had become interested in medicine
during his junior year at Georgia Tech.
“After learning of the MSTP, I decided it
would be a rewarding experience to take scientific
research and apply it to health care,”
Brossette says.
After completing rotations in other fields,
Brossette became the first MSTP student at
UAB to work on a doctorate in a non-biological
science. Encouraging him were several
UASOM faculty members, including Stephen
A. Moser, Ph.D., John A. Smith, M.D., Jay M.
McDonald, M.D., and Frank Griffin, M.D.,
(the latter now retired, but then director of the
MSTP program). Warren Jones, Ph.D., professor
emeritus in computer sciences, spurred
Brossette’s interest in applying data-mining
techniques to research on hospital infections.
A cross-campus collaboration between pathology
and computer sciences resulted.
Brossette had earned his Ph.D. and M.D. and
was working on a residency in pathology when
his phone rang one day in 2000. It was a representative
from a firm in the Boston area. The
firm’s scientists had read Brossette’s reports and
were interested in commercializing his work.
“These infections are
a big, expensive
problem. They make
a lot of people sick
and kill some of
them. Patients lose.
Hospitals lose.
Insurers lose.”
— Stephen Brossette, M.D., Ph.D.
His response was quick: “No thanks. I’d like
to do that myself,” Brossette recalls saying. He
put down the phone and picked it up again, calling
Patrick Hymel, M.D., and G. T. LaBorde, an
attorney, both friends since childhood. All three
had harbored dreams of being entrepreneurs.
LaBorde drew up a business plan, and in a
month the three had set up shop in a one-room
office at UAB’s Office for the Advancement of
Developing Industries (OADI).
Backed by $2.25 million in venture-capital
funding, MedMined now has 60 hospital
clients under contract and 16 staff members.
Among these are Brossette, Hymel (who serves
as chief medical officer), and LaBorde, chief
operating officer. This past August, MedMined
and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama
joined forces to track hospital-acquired infections
at 40 of the state’s largest hospitals.
“We believe this will be a landmark study in
its field,” Brossette says. “It will set the stage
for the future.”
These days, Brossette has little time to
indulge his hobbies of photography and cooking.
“My wife, Lynda, son, Nathan, who’s two,
and Audrey, four months, deserve my time
when I’m at home,” he says.
Time is at a premium on the job, too.
“There are 2,500 hospitals that can use our
services, and we’re developing relationships
with corporate partners to roll out services
faster,” Brossette says. “We believe we can
affect more patients by taking this technology
to the world than by treating them individually.
It’s an opportunity we’re excited about.”
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