e-News June 16, 2011

June 16, 2011

June 2011 VOL 3 ISSUE 24


AMIA Education/Events AMIA Annual Symposium 2011 Registration Opens Academic Forum Elects New Leadership UT Health Science Center Joins 10x10	Policy & Government Affairs CMS Issues Proposed Rule on Availability of Medicare Data for Performance Measurement White House Establishes Council to Strengthen Rural Communities ONC Introduces New ‘Investing in Innovations’ Initiative IOM-NAE Announce Winners of Health Data Collegiate Challenge Brookings to Host Roundtable on Active Medical Product Surveillance NIST Usability Workshop Presentations Now Available CDC Focusing on Global Health at Public Health Conference Calendar	Member News Cerner Supports AMIA as Corporate Partner Academic Forum Member Receives First Data Warehouse MU Certification Friedman Accepts Position at Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor Burroughs Wellcome Supports Early Career Development Members Herald Oldest Informatics Journal

AMIA Annual Symposium 2011 Registration Opens

Registration for AMIA’s 35th Annual Symposium on Biomedical and Health Informatics is now OPEN. Chaired by R. Scott Evans, PhD, FACMI, Intermountain Healthcare/University of Utah, the theme of this year’s meeting is Improving Health: Informatics and IT Changing the World. The meeting will convene at the Washington Hilton, Washington, DC, from Oct. 22-26, 2011, several weeks earlier than usual, and just in time to enjoy Washington, DC’s great fall weather! Attractive early-bird rates—available only to AMIA members—remain available until Aug. 4, 2011.

For more information about pre-conference tutorials, hotel information, and registration, visit https://www.amia.org/amia2011. More information is added on a weekly basis. Be sure you follow AMIA on Twitter for more news on #AMIA2011.

Academic Forum Elects New Leadership

Following the approval of governance policies and procedures by the AMIA Board of Directors, voting members of the AMIA Academic Forum have elected its first Executive Committee. Elected members are:

Stuart Speedie, PhD, University of Minnesota, Chair (one-year term)
Cindy Gadd, PhD, MBA, M.S., Vanderbilt University, Chair-elect (one-year term)
Bonnie Westra, PhD, RN, FAAN, University of Minnesota, Secretary (two-year term)
Harold Lehmann, MD, PhD, FACMI, Johns Hopkins University, At-large (two-year term to alternate with Secretary’s term)

There are two additional members of the Executive Committee Mark Musen (Past-chair) and Edward H. Shortliffe (AMIA President and CEO). The fifth Annual Conference of the Academic Forum meets on Monday, June 27. Academic informatics programs are encouraged to join and become active in AMIA’s Academic Forum. Forum members who have not yet registered to attend should contact Lisa Anderson at lisa@amia.org or (301) 657-1291.

UT Health Science Center Joins 10x10

The School of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTH) has become the newest 10x10 partner with the introduction of their course, Healthcare Interface Design. Register now to become part of the first class to take this brand new 10x10 course. UTH’s online course focuses on EMR, human-computer interaction, human factors and Health IT usability. This interactive course will allow the student to master the fundamental principles and methods in health interface design, learn how to evaluate the usability of existing systems, and design new systems with built-in usability by applying related theories, principles, methodologies and techniques. The course begins July 11. Click here to register.

Also available through the 10x10 program:

10x10 with Stanford University—Representations and Algorithms for Computational Molecular Biology—begins June 21.
10x10 with OHSU in conjunction with the American College of Emergency Physicians—begins June 29.
10x10 with OHSU—Introduction to Biomedical and Health Informatics—begins July 6.

For more information, visit https://www.amia.org/e-learning.

CMS Issues Proposed Rule on Availability of Medicare Data for Performance Measurement

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently issued a new proposed rule to implement new statutory requirements regarding the release and use of standardized extracts of Medicare claims data to measure the performance of providers and suppliers in ways that protect patient privacy. The rule explains how entities can become qualified by CMS to receive standardized extracts of claims data under Medicare Parts A, B, and D for the purpose of evaluation of the performance of providers of services and suppliers. The deadline for commenting is August 8, 2011. For more information, click here.

White House Establishes Council to Strengthen Rural Communities

The Obama Administration recently announced the establishment of the first White House Rural Council to coordinate programs across government and to encourage public-private partnerships. Among the key areas that the council will address is health care and how to improve access to quality health care through expansion of health technology systems. For more information, click here.

ONC Introduces New ‘Investing in Innovations’ Initiative

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) recently announced a new program called, Investing in Innovations (i2). The program is designed to spur innovations in health IT and provides prizes and competitions to accelerate the development of solutions and communities around key challenges in health IT. The program was made possible by the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010. As part of the program's launch, ONC awarded $5 million to the Capital Consulting Corporation (CCC) and Health 2.0 LLC to support innovations in research and encouraging health IT development through open-innovation mechanisms like prizes and challenges. For more information, click here.

IOM-NAE Announce Winners of Health Data Collegiate Challenge

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) recently announced the winners of their "Go Viral to Improve Health" challenge. The program was meant to spur undergraduate and graduate students to transform health data into effective, innovative new apps to engage people in various communities to promote action to improve health and healthcare. The three winning teams were recognized on June 9 at the Health Data Initiative Forum in Bethesda, Md. For more information, click here.

Brookings to Host Roundtable on Active Medical Product Surveillance

The Brookings Institution is hosting an upcoming roundtable webinar called, "Learnings from the Department of Veterans Affairs Active Surveillance Activites," on Mon., June 20, from 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. ET. The event will feature a presentation by Dr. Fran Cunningham, Associate Chief Consultant, Center for Medication Safety Program Manager, Outcomes Research, Department of Veterans Affairs and Dr. Chester B. Good, Associate Professor of Medicine and Pharmacy, Staff Physician, VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System, Co-Director, Center for Medication Safety. Discussions will focus on methods used and lessons learned from two of the VA’s active surveillance activities. For more information, click here.

NIST Usability Workshop Presentations Now Available

On June 7, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) convened a workshop in Gaithersburg, Md., entitled "Measuring, Evaluating and Improving the Usability of Electronic Health Records." The event was an open forum for stakeholders to discuss and provide technical feedback toward the development of EHR usability evaluation methods. For more information, click here.

CDC Focusing on Global Health at Public Health Conference

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working in partnership with AMIA and several other collaborators on their annual Public Health Informatics Conference, Aug. 21-24, 2011, in Atlanta. The conference features an International Night on Aug. 21, with poster presentations, awards, and a panel discussion with leading health professionals from CDC, World Health Organization, and other international organizations, and a global workshop facilitated by global health informatics leaders to engage the participants in a roadmap development activity, to address information-related global health challenges and needs. For more information, click here.

Cerner Supports AMIA as Corporate Partner

Cerner AMIA welcomes Cerner as a Corporate Member. Cerner was founded in 1979 with a clear focus to improve healthcare through technology. Cerner is a leading global supplier of healthcare solutions, healthcare devices and related services for clients in 25 countries. Cerner covers all areas from physician practices, to hospitals, to consumers, to corporations, to employers, to local, regional and national government agencies. Cerner offers a broad range of healthcare services including implementation and training, remote hosting, healthcare data analysis, transaction processing for physician practices and employer health plan third party administration services. Cerner’s rich history in research and development (R&D) of technology that improves health includes a cumulative R&D investment of $2 billion by 2010. Cerner’s 2009 revenues were $1.67 billion and the company has more than 7,900 associates including 1,000 clinicians. For more information, visit http://www.cerner.com/.

Academic Forum Member Receives First Data Warehouse MU Certification

One of AMIA’s newest Academic Forum members, Northwestern University, received the nation’s first Meaningful Use Certification for a data warehouse. Northwestern’s academic medical center’s program, Northwestern Medical Enterprise Data Warehouse Application for Hospitals (EDW), was found to be ONC-ATCB 2011/2012 compliant as an electronic health record (EHR) Module, in accordance with applicable certification criteria adopted by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The Northwestern Medical EDW is the first data warehouse, and one of very few internally-developed systems of any type, to achieve this certification nationally. For more information, click here.

Friedman Accepts Position at Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Charles Friedman, PhD, ACMI Fellow, and Chief Science Officer & Deputy National Coordinator at the HHS/ONC announced that as of Sept. 1, 2011, he will join the faculty of the University of Michigan School of Information and School of Public Health, as director of the university’s new program in health informatics. This “is a first-of- its-kind joint venture of the two schools,” Dr. Friedman said, adding that the scope of the program will be broad “with distinctive emphasis on human-centered computing and consumer informatics.” Friedman characterized the new professorship as “the perfect next step in my career.”

Burroughs Wellcome Supports Early Career Development

To advance the careers of physical, chemical or computational science researchers and engineers whose work addresses biological questions, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Awards at the Scientific Interface will provide $500,000 to bridge advanced post-doctoral training and the first years of faculty service. These awards are open to U.S. and Canadian citizens or permanent residents as well as to U.S. temporary residents. Pre-proposals will be reviewed by the Interfaces in Science Advisory Committee and selected candidates will be invited to submit a full application. Full invited applications must be submitted by Jan. 11, 2012. Deadline for pre-proposals is Sept. 1, 2011. For full grant details, click here.

Members Herald Oldest Informatics Journal

Several leading AMIA members attended a symposium in Heidelberg, Germany, from June 9-11, 2011, to recognize the 50th anniversary of the oldest journal in the field, Methods of Information in Medicine, published by Schattauer Verlag. Originally published in German, the journal was soon converted to an English language publication by its founding editor, the late Gustav Wagner. The symposium, “Biomedical Informatics: Confluence of Multiple Disciplines,” included presentations that reflected on the history, current state, and future of the discipline. It closed with a special panel of journal editors who discussed the role of informatics journals and the responsibilities of editors, as well as the challenges faced in the evolving world of electronic publishing. Participating editors were Reinhold Haux (Methods of Information in Medicine), Chris Lehmann (Applied Clinical Informatics), Lucila Ohno-Machado (Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association), Jan Talmon (International Journal of Medical Informatics), and Ted Shortliffe (Journal of Biomedical Informatics).