Computational medicine, a fast-growing method of using computer models and sophisticated software to figure out how disease develops—and how to thwart it—has begun to leap off the drawing board and land in the hands of doctors who treat patients for heart ailments, cancer, and other illnesses.

Using digital tools, researchers have begun to use experimental and clinical data to build models that can unravel complex medical mysteries. These are some of the conclusions of a new review of the field published in the Oct. 31, 2012, issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine. The article, “Computational Medicine: Translating Models to Clinical Care,” was written by four Johns Hopkins professors affiliated with the university’s Institute for Computational Medicine.

The institute was launched in 2005 as a collaboration between the university’s Whiting School of Engineering and its School of Medicine. The goal was to use powerful computers to analyze and mathematically model disease mechanisms. The results were to be used to help predict who is at risk of developing a disease and to determine how to treat it more effectively.

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