B&B translational biomedical informatics faculty have increased their presence at important Biomedical Informatics meetings such as the AMIA (American Medical Informatics Association) Joint Summits and also at other events such as ACTStat (Association of Clinical and Translational Statisticians).
A few highlights of B&B faculty activities follow. At the upcoming AMIA Summit this March, faculty Ben Goldstein, PhD will give a talk, “Translating Clinical Trial Results to a Target EHR Population Using Machine Learning & Causal Inference.” Members of his lab will also give a talk and present a poster. Faculty Jessie Tenenbaum, PhD will deliver an Ignite talk entitled “Mental health: the next frontier for informatics to enable precision medicine.” Her mentee Dr. Julian Hong, a resident in radiation oncology, will present a poster entitled “Machine learning on EHR data for prediction of emergency visits and hospitalization during cancer radiotherapy.” PhD student Brian Douthit, mentored by (B&B affiliated) faculty Dr. Rachel Richesson will present his paper “Emergency Department Clinician Perspectives on the Data Availability to Implement Clinical Decision Support Tools for Five Clinical Practice Guidelines” as a finalist in the student paper competition
Duke’s presence at AMIA extends beyond the B&B Department; Leslie Curtis, PhD, recently named Chair of the Department of Population Health Sciences will be giving the Keynote Address. Other Duke affiliated faculty and staff will also be presenting at AMIA as well, including Bhargav Adagarla, Dr. Nrupen Bhavsar, Davera Gabriel, RN, Thomas Li, Brian McCourt, Matthew Phelan, MS, Laura Qualls, MS, Ursula Rogers, Shelley Rusincovitch, MS, and Wen Yin.
Rachel Richesson has also twice offered a 10-week online course titled “Data Standards for Learning Health Systems” through AMIA‘s 10x10 program, aimed at training a new generation of informaticians. B&B faculty Erich Huang and W.Ed Hammond support the course with guest lectures, as have Duke faculty from other DUSOM departments, and Duke informatics staff and alumni. Duke is one of only a dozen schools that have been selected by AMIA to provide informatics education as part of the 10x10 program. The course will be offered annually and increase the participation of B&B faculty to leverage and showcase the breadth of informatics and data expertise that is in our department.
In January, faculty Jessie Tenenbaum gave a well-received lecture about Translational Bioinformatics and Precision Medicine at the Luxinnovation Lecture Series on Translational Bioinformatics & Systems. On February 13th, she delivered a half-day informatics “short course” module at the FDA on Genomics and Precision Medicine.
Last summer, Ben Goldstein gave the Keynote Address “Opportunities and Challenges for Clinical Research with Electronic Health Records” at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Clinical and Translational Statisticians (ACTStat). He has also presented his work at ENAR and JSM. The above highlights are just a sampling of the accomplishments of B&B faculty in the informatics arena and our increasing recognition as an academic home for informatics experts and researchers. We expect to share more stories in the coming years as our stellar faculty continue to cultivate a Duke presence at major informatics events across the country.