What is Biomedical Informatics?
Biomedical Informatics is the discipline focused on the acquisition, representation, organization, storage, retrieval, and application of biomedical knowledge and information to improve patient care, medical education, and health sciences research . Biomedical informatics is concerned with the study and application of computer science, information science, management science, cognitive science and human-computer interaction in the practice of biological research, biomedical science, medicine and healthcare. Other closely related fields, including bioinformatics, clinical informatics, public health informatics, and imaging informatics are commonly cast as subdomains within biomedical informatics.
Core areas of biomedical informatics include methods for acquisition, storage and use of biomedical data, biomedical decision support, standards for biomedical data representation and processing, controlled vocabularies, ontologies for representation of biomedical knowledge, natural language and text processing, image processing, human factors in computer system design, privacy and protection of patient information, ethical issues related to data acquisition and use, and evaluation and assessment of technology in health care.
Core applications of biomedical informatics include electronic health record systems, management of information in healthcare organizations, consumer health informatics, telehealth systems, health information infrastructure, public health surveillance systems, clinical trial systems including electronic data capture, research data management, patient-care systems for both inpatient and outpatient settings (including decision support), imaging systems, order entry systems, electronic pharmacy and dispensing systems, information retrieval and digital libraries, and bioinformatics – tools and techniques for acquisition, storage and use of genomic, metabolic and proteomic data.
The professional home of Biomedical Informatics is the American Medical Informatics Association . Core journals include the Journal of Biomedical Informatics and the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) .
The Biomedical Informatics Program Core of the Clinical and Translationslational Science Institute
Overview, Goals and Objectives:
The overall goal of the BMI Program (BMIP) is to bring the collaborative power of the University to bear on Translational 1 ("molecules to patients") and Translational 2 ("research to practice") problems by developing informatics capabilities to support collaborations among investigators, integration of data and academic pursuits including graduate programs and methods research. UF has particular strength in plant, animal and human science at the molecular level. BMIP will develop the informatics skills and capabilities needed to translate and apply those strengths to improve human health. Therefore, we will create an environment in which individuals from diverse disciplines can interact, resources, services and technologies can be identified and accessed and local and regional barriers to collaborative research can be overcome (Clinical and Translational Science Institute Goal 1). BMI educational programs will train the workforce required to lead, establish and support multi- and interdisciplinary clinical and translational research teams and supports all other CTSI programs by providing foundational services for their educational activities (CTSI Goal 2). BMIP enhances the quality and availability of cutting-edge technologies and novel research programs to accelerate the discovery, development and application of new diagnostic and therapeutic modalities by integrating data, enabling data management and providing visualization of and access to complex data sets (CTSI Goal 3). By focusing on key informatics needs, BMIP will create new opportunities for clinical scientists and the citizens of Florida to collaborate in advancing education and research into the causes, prevention, diagnosis, treatment and cure of human disease. (CTSI Goal 4). Accordingly, BMIP has three broad five-year goals:
Goal 1. Promote collaboration in translational research. We will develop and operate a collection of fundamental support systems to facilitate collaboration and the growth of translational research. Therefore, our specific aims are to: 1) develop the CTSI Portal to serve as the on-line nexus for CTSI activity; 2) develop a study registry for the UF HSC; 3) develop an investigator registry to enhance multi- and interdisciplinary collaboration; 4) develop a data registry to foster reuse; 5) develop an integrated specimen registry to foster collaboration and reuse of clinical and laboratory data; 6) refine and expand existing informatics support for investigators; and 7) promote collaboration through the use of informatics resources.
Goal 2. Integrate clinical and research data systems to support translational science. Significant work will be needed to take our currently independent systems and develop a sound, scalable, current and evolving architecture for integrating data production systems with clinical research systems. To accomplish this goal we will: 1) adopt national standards for security, software and data interchange; 2) integrate with national data repositories; 3) establish institutional enterprise research informatics architecture; 4) integrate translational technology resources with BMI; 5) integrate clinical research unit data with BMI; 6) develop integrated research database delivery; and 7) promote data sharing at the institutional, regional and national levels.
Goal 3. Develop a nationally recognized academic program in Biomedical Informatics. Our future as a research institution rests on our ability to train the biomedical informaticians of the future as well as engage informatics scientists in support of academic health. To this end we will: 1) develop a roadmap for the creation of the BMI academic program; 2) recruit a permanent director and faculty to our new Division of Biomedical Informatics that will evolve into an independent department; 3) establish the BMI teaching program; 4) expand fundamental research in BMI; 5) develop BMI Translational 1 leadership; 6) develop BMI Translational 2 leadership; and 7) promote BMI education for CTSI investigators.
BMIP directly supports the goals of the CTSI by providing tangible information resources in support of clinical and translational research. Thus it addresses the often vexing complexities of today’s highly collaborative and data-rich science.
