11-14-2007, 12:33 AM
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Nov. 13, 2007, 6:53AM
Conference shows blood and oil can mix â in Houston
'Pumps & Pipes' lets heart doctors brainstorm with petroleum experts
By ERIC BERGER
Copyright 2007 Houston Chr
RESOURCES
SciGuy blog It's not surprising that heart doctors and petroleum engineers have professional conferences. But it is rather unusual to find them sitting through PowerPoint presentations in the same meeting room.
Yet that's just what happened Monday when leading heart surgeons and cardiologists from the Texas Medical Center convened with oil and gas researchers from some of Houston's top energy firms.
Such a pairing might seem odd, but it turns out that two of Houston's biggest industries have a lot in common. Both heart docs and oil execs want to push liquids â be it blood or oil â through long, narrow tubes, without blockages or corrosion, for extended periods of time. Both also want to closely monitor these tubes, and want to be able to fix problems when they arise.
Would it be possible, then, for doctors and engineers to learn from one another? That's what Dr. Alan Lumsden, a professor of surgery at the Methodist DeBakey Heart Center, pondered 18 months ago when he dreamed up the idea of the "Pumps & Pipes" conference.
"I wanted it to be a uniquely Houston event," he said. "No one anywhere can do this quite like we can do it here."
He soon found a willing partner in ExxonMobil's research department to sponsor the conference.
"We put a high premium on thinking outside of the box," said Bill Kline, research manager for Exxon's Upstream Research Company. "The highest value thing we can have here is a new idea. What we really hope with this conference is to spark dialogue and creativity and fresh approaches to our problems."
40-year-old precedent
So on Monday, Houston Mayor Bill White found himself addressing a conference room at the University of Houston filled with 130 heart doctors, oil and gas engineers and UH research scientists.
He hailed the "visionary" approach of Lumsden and those assembled.
"We are fortunate in this community to be a world center in life science research and energy research," White said. "These are tremendous assets we have, but it would be an even greater asset if there is a cross-fertilization today of ideas between the two industries."
There is one precedent that suggests such an experiment might work.
Nearly four decades ago a young Oklahoma surgeon named Lazar Greenfield lost a patient after blood clots in the man's legs eventually clogged up his lungs. Greenfield removed the clots from the lungs, but the patient still died.
Greenfield thought there must be a better way, and a suggestion from an engineer friend in the oil industry led the two men to develop an implantable filter for trapping blood clots before they reach the lungs. Since then more than 500,000 Greenfield filters have been used in patients.
"We're hoping to make more connections like that today," Lumsden said.
Fundamentally, heart doctors and engineers at Monday's conference said they do the same thing. Both use ultrasound and other techniques to see into places where humans can't go â for doctors, inside the heart and arteries; for engineers, 10,000 feet below ground. Doctors use catheters. Oil and gas engineers use drills. And so on.
In the sessions, heart talks were followed by analogous talks from the oil and gas field.
There was, for example, first a talk on "Left Ventricular Assist Devices" by Dr. George Noon, of the Baylor College of Medicine. It was followed by a discussion of "Subsurface Pumps" by ExxonMobil Production Company's Rodney Bane. Later in the day Dr. William Cohn of the Texas Heart Institute spoke of "Staples, Glues and Stitches." This was followed by "Multi-Lateral Well Junctions," from Baker Hughes' Daniel Craig.
"The day is structured in a way that all of the parallels will become readily apparent," said Ioannis Kakadiaris, director of UH's Computational Biomedicine Lab. "And there are so many parallels."
Planning for next year
Organizers appeared to be expecting success. They rather presumptively titled the conference "Pumps & Pipes 1," with the expectations of more to come in the future.
Kakadiaris said next year's conference would include presentations from research collaborations of heart doctors and oil engineers who connected at Monday's event.
"So get talking!" he exhorted the crowd before one break.
Nov. 13, 2007, 6:53AM
Conference shows blood and oil can mix â in Houston
'Pumps & Pipes' lets heart doctors brainstorm with petroleum experts
By ERIC BERGER
Copyright 2007 Houston Chr
RESOURCES
SciGuy blog It's not surprising that heart doctors and petroleum engineers have professional conferences. But it is rather unusual to find them sitting through PowerPoint presentations in the same meeting room.
Yet that's just what happened Monday when leading heart surgeons and cardiologists from the Texas Medical Center convened with oil and gas researchers from some of Houston's top energy firms.
Such a pairing might seem odd, but it turns out that two of Houston's biggest industries have a lot in common. Both heart docs and oil execs want to push liquids â be it blood or oil â through long, narrow tubes, without blockages or corrosion, for extended periods of time. Both also want to closely monitor these tubes, and want to be able to fix problems when they arise.
Would it be possible, then, for doctors and engineers to learn from one another? That's what Dr. Alan Lumsden, a professor of surgery at the Methodist DeBakey Heart Center, pondered 18 months ago when he dreamed up the idea of the "Pumps & Pipes" conference.
"I wanted it to be a uniquely Houston event," he said. "No one anywhere can do this quite like we can do it here."
He soon found a willing partner in ExxonMobil's research department to sponsor the conference.
"We put a high premium on thinking outside of the box," said Bill Kline, research manager for Exxon's Upstream Research Company. "The highest value thing we can have here is a new idea. What we really hope with this conference is to spark dialogue and creativity and fresh approaches to our problems."
40-year-old precedent
So on Monday, Houston Mayor Bill White found himself addressing a conference room at the University of Houston filled with 130 heart doctors, oil and gas engineers and UH research scientists.
He hailed the "visionary" approach of Lumsden and those assembled.
"We are fortunate in this community to be a world center in life science research and energy research," White said. "These are tremendous assets we have, but it would be an even greater asset if there is a cross-fertilization today of ideas between the two industries."
There is one precedent that suggests such an experiment might work.
Nearly four decades ago a young Oklahoma surgeon named Lazar Greenfield lost a patient after blood clots in the man's legs eventually clogged up his lungs. Greenfield removed the clots from the lungs, but the patient still died.
Greenfield thought there must be a better way, and a suggestion from an engineer friend in the oil industry led the two men to develop an implantable filter for trapping blood clots before they reach the lungs. Since then more than 500,000 Greenfield filters have been used in patients.
"We're hoping to make more connections like that today," Lumsden said.
Fundamentally, heart doctors and engineers at Monday's conference said they do the same thing. Both use ultrasound and other techniques to see into places where humans can't go â for doctors, inside the heart and arteries; for engineers, 10,000 feet below ground. Doctors use catheters. Oil and gas engineers use drills. And so on.
In the sessions, heart talks were followed by analogous talks from the oil and gas field.
There was, for example, first a talk on "Left Ventricular Assist Devices" by Dr. George Noon, of the Baylor College of Medicine. It was followed by a discussion of "Subsurface Pumps" by ExxonMobil Production Company's Rodney Bane. Later in the day Dr. William Cohn of the Texas Heart Institute spoke of "Staples, Glues and Stitches." This was followed by "Multi-Lateral Well Junctions," from Baker Hughes' Daniel Craig.
"The day is structured in a way that all of the parallels will become readily apparent," said Ioannis Kakadiaris, director of UH's Computational Biomedicine Lab. "And there are so many parallels."
Planning for next year
Organizers appeared to be expecting success. They rather presumptively titled the conference "Pumps & Pipes 1," with the expectations of more to come in the future.
Kakadiaris said next year's conference would include presentations from research collaborations of heart doctors and oil engineers who connected at Monday's event.
"So get talking!" he exhorted the crowd before one break.