A Systems Engineer's Approach to Understanding Waldenstrom's Macroglobulinemia and Idiopathic Thrombocytopenia Purpura

This paper describes the process followed by the author in attempting to understand the body/disease/treatment complex for the diseases he has, Idiopathic Thrombocytopenia Purpura (ITP) and Waldenstrom's Macroglobulinemia (WM) and the development of models and simulations to represent that complex. While little was known by the author about platelets and ITP, and IgM and WM at the time of diagnosis, a tops-down approach was taken to learn the physiology and biology of each. Starting out at the most abstract level, the complete body system, research was performed to understand the processes from an organ/physiological perspective and put it into the context of the separate functional boxes that the author learned during his career as a system engineer working on complex aerospace systems. The models and simulations can become tools to create an interchange vehicle between the modeler and the medical person to further the understanding of this very complicated complex. © 2010 The Authors.