Piet C. De Groen, M.D.

My clinical research objective is to decrease the mortality due to hepatocellular cancer (primary cancer of the liver) and cholangiocarcinoma (cancer of the bile ducts) by actively pursuing early detection of these diseases in patients at risk, develop new or improve current diagnostic modalities, and finally investigate new treatment options.

In addition, I have an interest in bioinformatics. I have led the development of web-based databases and applications for the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center in Rochester, Minnesota, and currently am the Program Director at Mayo Clinic Rochester of the Mayo Clinic/IBM Computational Biology Collaboration which is developing a comprehensive prototype system for access to and interpretation of clinical, genomic as well as proteomic data.

A third field of interest combines clinical and informatics research. Together with colleagues from Iowa State University and the University of Texas at Arlington, I am developing computer-based, automated analysis tools for endoscopic procedures. This requires development of new algorithms for analysis of digitized audio-video files; our current focus is colonoscopy. Together with colleagues from the University of Minnesota, I am working on data mining of clinical data in order to determine whether past information can successfully be used to predict future health status outcomes.