In Spokane, a consortium headed by developer John Stone is catalyzing the Inland Empire around the business opportunities and educational requirements of digital medicine.

"Our intent is to create a stand-alone institute that works on P4 Medicine," Stone says. Really, this is a plan that is built on the core competencies of our area. There's a lot of buzz."

The nexus for the region's P4 focus is Stone's Institute for Systems Medicine (ISM), a research center that was inspired by Leroy Hood's Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) in Seattle. According to Stone, the vision for ISM is "a regional institute including northern Idaho and western Montana. There are four research institutes in the Puget Sound area, and there are none in the Spokane area. It really is the first time we've tied a ribbon around education and medicine and focused them into an institute."

ISM, which is collaborating with the University of Washington's WWAMI Program, a service of the UW's medical school that helps bring state-of-the-art medicine to rural areas in five Western states, has heady goals that include:

- attracting top scientific, academic and business talent to eastern Washington;

- fostering entrepreneurial business development by focusing on rapid technological commercialization of the institute's discoveries, and nurturing new businesses to market these;

- advancing a relevant research agenda based on local health issues that lead to earlier diagnoses and improved therapeutics;

- strengthening partner organizations through collaboration and an interdisciplinary approach;

- inspiring a new generation of scientists through interactive K-20 programs;

- driving economic development in eastern Washington through job creation and expansion; and

- improving global health through purpose-driven research relevant to modern human disease.

So far, the consortium has raised $45 million to $50 million in city, county and state money. Gov. Chris Gregoire, Sen. Lisa Brown and Speaker of the House Frank Chopp support ISM's development vision, and last year the state gave $1 million to the effort. Stone says he's hoping for support from the Life Sciences Discovery Fund, a state-supported project to jump-start worthy biotechnology businesses. ISM has begun searching for a top-caliber chief science officer.

"When we get into P4 Medicine, there are a lot of medical devices and technologies yet to be developed," Stone says. "Our goal is not only to enhance education and medicine in the community, but to develop new jobs as well, and we plan to do that by building on the skills of the region."