Biomedical and Health
Informatics at SILS and UNC
Javed Mostafa
Professor
SILS & BRIC
UNC at Chapel Hill
What is Informatics?
• Informatics is the science of information,
where information is defined as data with
meaning. Biomedical-/Clinical-/Public Healthinformatics is the science of information
applied to, or studied in the context of
Biomedical-/Clinical-/Public Health.
Bernstam, E., Smith, J., & Johnson, T. What is Biomedical Informatics? (2009). J. of Biomedical
Informatics, 43(2010): 104-110.
… Clinical Informatics
• American Medical Informatics Association
(AMIA) recently approved the Core Content of
“subspecialty” of Clinical Informatics
– Clinical Informaticians transform health care by
analyzing, designing, implementing, and
evaluating information and communication
systems
… that enhance individual, population health outcomes,
improve patient care, and strengthen the clinicianpatient relationship
Gardner et al. (2009). Core content for the subspecialty of clinical informatics. JAMIA, 16(2), 153-157.
Tremendous Opportunity Now
• Meaningful use (Blumenthal, 2010)
– Improving quality, safety and efficiency
– Engaging patients in their care
– Increasing coordination of care
– Improving the health status of the population
– Ensuring privacy and security
• Eligible professionals and eligible hospitals
started receiving incentive payments for
achieving meaningful use of EHRs in 2011
Hersh, W. (2010). Biomedical and Health Informatics: Improving Health,
Healthcare, and Biomedical Research with Information
Technology. Presented at the Annual CTSA Conference, Washington DC.
US Funding HI Education
• ONC estimates 50,000 workers needed to
implement federal HIT agenda (Monegain,
2009)
• ONC is funding $118 million for
– Community college consortia ($70M)
– Curriculum Development Centers ($10M)
– Competency testing ($6M)
– University training grants ($32M)
• Will provide scholarship funding for graduate
Hersh, W. (2010). Biomedical and Health Informatics: Improving Health,
Healthcare, and Biomedical Research with Information
Technology. Presented at the Annual CTSA Conference, Washington DC.
The President’s Council of Advisors on
Science and Technology
• Information technology (IT) has the potential to transform healthcare
as it has transformed many parts of our economy and society in
recent decades. Properly implemented, health IT can:
– Integrate technology into the flow of clinical practice as an asset, while
minimizing unproductive data entry work.
– Give clinicians real-time access to complete patient data, and provide them
with information support to make the best decisions.
– Help patients become more involved in their own care.
– Enable a range of population-level public health monitoring and real-time
research.
– Improve clinical trials, leading to more rapid advances in personalized
medicine.
– Streamline processes, increase their transparency, and reduce administrative
overhead, as it has in other industries.
– Lead to the creation of new high-technology markets and jobs.
– Help support a range of economic reforms in the healthcare system that will
be needed to address our Nation’s long-term fiscal challenges.
Career
• Inflow may include students with biology,
computer science, mathematics, IT,
information science, library science, business,
communication, medical, nursing, pharmacy,
public health backgrounds
• Job options include academia, industry, health
care facilities, insurance providers, and IT
companies
Broad Umbrella @ UNC
Biomedical/Clinical Informatics
Nursing/Systems Informatics
Public Health Informatics
Informatics
Critical Areas and Their Interactions
Health Care
The Health
System
Health Informatics
Information &
Communications
Technology
Health Care – provision of care services to an individual, group, and / or population
Health system – organization, policies, quality, data management
UNC Certificates
• SILS – Clinical Info Sci
– BS/BA with health care / technical background
• SoN – Health Care Systems – Informatics
– Post master’s
• Gillings SPH – Public Health Informatics
UNC Status I
• Carolina Health Informatics Program (CHIP)
– Supported through
• Office of the National Coordinator / Health and Human
Services
• National Institutes of Health / National Center for
Research Resources
• Office of the Provost – UNC – CH
• SILS
• SoM
• SoN
• Gillings SPH
UNC – Duke Collaboration
• UNC and Duke have formed a consortium for the
ONC/HHS grant
– Together we received support at the level 2.1 million
dollars
• We started our recruitment in late summer 2010 and had
interaction with about 25 students (serious prospects)
– 5 recruited to the program (fall of 2010)
• We are currently at 31
• UNC’s target is to recruit about 40 students by 2012 for the
certificate and (eventually) degree programs
Who are the competitors?
• There are approximately 30-35 programs
concentrating on biomedical, biological,
chemical, clinical, nursing, public health
informatics
• The number is rapidly rising … a recent
addition is UC San Diego – Division of
Biomedical Informatics (summer 2009)
The “Club” of 18
University of
California Irvine
Irvine, CA
Harvard University
(Medical School)
Boston, MA
Vanderbilt
University
Nashville, TN
Regenstrief/Indiana
University
Indianapolis, IN
University of
Washington
Seattle, WA
University of
Virginia
Charlottesville
Charlottesville,
VA
University of
California Los
Angeles
Los Angeles, CA
Johns Hopkins
University
Baltimore, MD
Rice University
Houston, TX
University of
Pittsburgh at
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA
Oregon Health &
Science University
Portland, OR
Columbia University
Health Sciences
New York, NY
.Stanford University
Stanford, CA
University of MissouriColumbia
Columbia, MO
University of Utah
Salt Lake City,
UT
University of
Wisconsin Madison
Madison, WI
Yale University
New Haven, CT
University of
Colorado
Denver/HSC Aurora
Aurora, CO
Long-term Plans
• Master’s program in biomedical and health
informatics
• We are actively seeking industrial collaborations –
“Media Lab” for Health IT
• We are developing grants/contracts in data
management and mining, HCI, data quality, and IT
spinoff potentials
Questions?
• Javed: jm@unc.edu
• Useful links:
• SILS: http://sils.unc.edu
• TraCS: http://tracs.unc.edu
• Others:
• Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC)
•
– http://healthit.hhs.gov
• American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)
•
– http://www.amia.org
• National Library of Medicine (NLM)
•
– http://www.nlm.nih.gov