Frequently Asked Questions

Will LSIT be another standard setting organization?
No, it will not. Instead, LSIT will blend appropriate international standards and best IT practices and systems to develop Good Informatics Practices (GIP). LSIT will facilitate regulators, medical researchers, medical product companies, healthcare providers and IT vendors to develop and establish GIP under the aegis of LSIT. With GIP adoption, the time and cost associated with medical product discovery, development, market approvals and patient management will be reduced.

Is it the intention of LSIT to patent the GIP?
No, as a not-for-profit, public benefit corporation, it is the intention of LSIT to publish its research, findings, and GIP developments openly to the global community, on a royalty free basis. LSIT's sustaining income will come from membership contributions, domestic and international government grants, philanthropic foundations and high net worth individuals' contributions.

Will LSIT be focused on developing GIP just for the North American market?
No, LSIT is a global institute and will seek active participation by domestic and international governments, regulatory agencies, medical researchers, medical product companies, healthcare providers and IT vendors on a worldwide basis. LSIT offices in Europe (EMEA) and Asia (APAC) are part of LSIT's business plan for the near future.

How will GIP be developed?
LSIT will develop GIP in accordance with prospective, scientifically valid protocols. GIP will be developed and established by multi-discipline working committees made up of appropriate life sciences, healthcare and IT professionals. GIP will be developed by prioritizing those informatics practices, which will most rapidly aid the life sciences and healthcare communities with trusted IT systems.

How will GIP be certified?
LSIT's vision for certifying GIP compliance is to qualify IT service providers and consultancy groups to perform independent assessments and certification of GIP. This of course requires acceptance of this practice by regulating governments. LSIT believes that the regulating governments will accept this practice as a means to afford those with true IT expertise the ability to certify GIP compliance. This will permit the regulating governments to more efficiently perform audits of the GIP certification process.

How will GIP benefit public health?
The main goal of LSIT is enable "trust" in the IT systems utilized in the life sciences and healthcare community. As GIP certified systems become trusted, much more advanced utilization of IT can be deployed in efforts to rapidly improve global public health. GIP trusted IT systems will enable tools such as computational predictive modeling (CPM) which promises to be more comprehensive and accurate than other traditional means, such as animal testing of human therapeutics.

GIP trusted IT systems will also afford IT enabled personalized diagnostic medical assessments of patients which will permit matching the right medication to each patient's exact disorder based upon their genotype.

As trust in IT systems utilized in the life sciences and healthcare community expands, it will permit more rapid and exacting discovery and development of medical therapeutics and diagnostics with savings in time and cost from discovery to the patient. It will also permit the scientific tools to effectively approach more elusive diseases such as tuberculosis, diphtheria, HIV, and perhaps even the common cold.

Which segment of the health care industry will LSIT focus?
LSIT will focus initially on medical product discovery and development. LSIT will expand through the entire spectrum life and health community including, manufacturing, clinical testing, market approval, and patient management and product problem management.

To ensure LSIT is not subject to any special interest, LSIT will seek a balance of funding from membership contributions, domestic and international government grants, philanthropic foundations and high net worth individual's contributions.

Who is eligible to join?
LSIT invites institutions and companies of any size in the Life Science and IT industries, Healthcare Providers and Medical and Scientific Researchers to join as members. Annual dues are structured according to the organization's number of employees. More information can be found in the Membership Section.

What are the benefits to my firm if we join LSIT?
As a member of LSIT, you have the opportunity to have a member of your company join in the multidisciplinary forum with peers from life science, IT, research and health care along with government regulators. Members will have input into establishing priorities, definitions and common language enabling agreement on formats, data creation, validation and security procedures. Qualified member representatives may participate in the development of prospective scientifically valid protocols. GIP will be developed and established by multi-discipline working committees made up of appropriate life sciences, healthcare and IT professionals. This collaborative approach will lead to the establishment of open, accepted and trusted information processes designated as GIP.

How did LSIT come into being?
LSIT traces its beginnings to a group of life science and IT professionals in San Diego, all of whom shared a common vision of enabling a process to remove the onerous challenges face by IT professionals in the life sciences and healthcare community and by government regulators. Professionals from a number of disciplines met to create LSIT with the goal of enabling trust in complex IT system converging into the life sciences and healthcare community. Sun Microsystems, Novartis and Pfizer gave grants to the formation of the organization. Other organizations provided professional skills and effort to make LSIT a reality and continue to be active in guiding the organization to the next level.