e-News March 10, 2011

March 10, 2011

March 2011 VOL 3 ISSUE 10


AMIA Education/Events Translational Scientists Descend on San Francisco Breakout Sessions Are Key Feature of PHI 2011 AMIA Teams up with ACEP for 10x10 Course	Policy & Government Affairs Roundtable Considers HIT’s Impact on Healthcare Disparities AMIA Comments on Federal HIT Standards New Funding Opportunities from National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities CMS Requests Nominations for Advisory Panel on Outreach and Education Coalition Urges Policymakers to Protect FDA Role NIST and HHS to Co-Host Conference on HIPAA Security Calendar	Member News Special Issue on HIT Ethics from AMA ACMI Fellow Chairs International Symposium

Translational Scientists Descend on San Francisco

AMIA welcomed nearly 500 TBI and CRI researchers, educators, and industry professionals to the Joint Summits on Translational Science, which kicked off March 7. They arrived at the Parc 55 Hotel San Francisco for the opportunity to meet new collaborators and hear new perspectives in these two fields currently experiencing explosive growth. The Joint Summits conclude on March 11.

TBI Summit Chair Neil Sarkar, PhD, MLIS, director of biomedical informatics and assistant professor at the University of Vermont’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science explains, “The TBI Summit, now in its fourth year, has embraced the trans-disciplinary nature of translational bioinformatics to become the foremost forum for scientific pioneers in biology and healthcare.”

CRI Summit Chair Philip R.O. Payne, PhD, chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at The Ohio State University says, “Bringing TBI and CRI professionals together accelerates work at their intersecting areas of focus and introduces added value to both fields – an even greater benefit to the larger healthcare community.”

Marco Ramoni Award

A student at University of Pittsburgh, Wei Wei, was chosen as the first recipient of The Marco Ramoni Distinguished Paper Award for Translational Bioinformatics. His winning paper is titled, "The Application of Naive Bayes Model Averaging to Predict Alzheimer’s Disease from Genome-Wide Data." The Ramoni Award was presented to him during the opening ceremony of the TBI Summit by ACMI Fellows Isaac Kohane, MD, PhD; Atul Butte, MD, PhD; and Kenneth D. Mandl, MD, MPH, in a touching moment at the Summits.

‘Bridge Day’

Buetow Dr. Kenneth H. Buetow, Director of the National Cancer Institute Center for Bioinformatics and Information Technology, and Laboratory Chief, Laboratory of Population Genetics, ‘bridged’ the Summits with a keynote address on the critical intersection between TBI and CRI, needed in order to advance personalized medicine. In his talk, Dr. Buetow described a vision whereby a comprehensive, flexible, semantically-aware informatics infrastructure that spans traditional organizational boundaries will be the core enabler of evidence-generation and personalized medicine. Dr. Buetow closed with stating that cross-cutting organizations, like AMIA, must rise to the challenge and drive the innovation necessary to realize the promise of personalized medicine.

Industry Support

Summit registrants are benefiting from case study presentations and product demonstrations from a number of leading clinical research software vendors including, IDBS, TransMed, Forte Research Systems, Inc., and Recombinant Data Systems. For the first time, the Joint Summits are featuring a series of Lunch–and–Learn sessions with these leading companies.

Twitter Chatter

“I used to be excited to have my whole genome sequenced someday. After #Zimmer keynote I want to see my #microbiome!”
“Noah Zimmerman just gave a great talk on flow data and food allergies.”
“Looking forward to #AMIA 'Bridge Day'”
“Following Translational Bioinformatics Summit #TBICRI11 Awesome tweets!”

Continue to follow the meeting on Twitter, #TBICRI11 and @AMIAInformatix.

Breakout Sessions Are Key Feature of PHI 2011

Active participation will be the backbone of PHI 2011: Setting the Next Informatics Agenda for Public Health. Attendees will experience open dialogue with leading experts in public health in a series of breakout sessions to “set the next informatics agenda for public health.” Breakout tracks include: ethics, technical frameworks, professional training and workforce development, research and evaluation, and sustainability. The focal point of this meeting will be on participation, expert leaders, and the public who will benefit.

The PHI 2011 daily schedule is now available online. Each day’s schedule includes a combination of breakout sessions, components of a 'Partnerships in Innovation' series, and poster sessions, as well as several receptions to network with other PHI 2011 participants, invited experts, and the Scientific Program Committee members. The final day will feature reports from the breakout groups, presented in two plenary sessions. To view the program agenda, click here.

Early registration ends April 7. Take advantage of lowest available rates while they last! Advance registration rates go into effect April 8. For more information about PHI 2011, click here.

AMIA Teams up with ACEP for 10x10 Course

AMIA and OHSU collaborate with the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) to offer a specialized 10x10 course, beginning April 20. This course is tried-and-true; it is the fourth time it will be presented. The course is geared towards Emergency Medicine and has been built specifically for emergency physicians, emergency nurses, and other emergency personnel. It culminates at an in-person session to be held at the ACEP’s 2011 Scientific Assembly in October in San Francisco. Registration is now open.

The ACEP is the largest and most influential emergency medicine association in the world. Founded in 1968, ACEP promotes the highest quality emergency care, represents more than 25,000 emergency medicine specialists, and serves as the leading advocate for emergency physicians, their patients and the public.

Just Announced

10x10 with Nova Southeastern University – Survey of Biomedical Informatics Course – begins May 16.
10x10 with Stanford University – Representations and Algorithms for Computational Molecular Biology – begins June 21.

Other Available Courses

10x10 with OHSU in conjunction with the American Dietetic Association (ADA) – begins April 13
10x10 with OHSU – begins April 27
10x10 with UIC – begins May 27

For more information, click here.

Roundtable Considers HIT’s Impact on Healthcare Disparities

Leaders in healthcare, along with AMIA, Kaiser Permanente, and AHRQ, met this week to consider health information technology’s potential in promoting greater health equity and patient-centered care, as well as its capacity to unintentionally increase the existing disparities in healthcare.

“We are highly aware that heightened use of health information technology could result in greater healthcare disparities,” said AMIA President and CEO Ted Shortliffe. “While that unintended consequence is a possibility, AMIA is taking steps to expand informatics in public health. We recognize that wise use of technology for health promotion and disease prevention and detection addresses the needs of the entire population, thereby lessening opportunities for disparities to develop.”

For more information on the roundtable, click here.

Meanwhile, more information about health disparities in the United States is available: AHRQ's recently updated National Healthcare Quality & Disparities Report, and the CDC's Health Disparities and Inequalities Report, 2011.

AMIA Comments on Federal HIT Standards

AMIA recently responded to a request for public comments about the effectiveness of federal agency participation in standardization in health information technology from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Science and Technology Council‘s Sub-Committee on Standardization. In its comments, AMIA noted the crucial role that organizations like the National Library of Medicine, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, and the National Committee for Vital and Health Statistics are playing in health IT standards development. AMIA also encouraged NIST and the Sub-Committee to recognize that the HIT-specific standards process is complex, dynamic, and continuous. AMIA's full comments are available here.

New Funding Opportunities from National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities

NIH's National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) is seeking applications from organizations to establish a Comprehensive NIMHD Center of Excellence (COE) that would support infrastructure and capacity building; build and sustain novel partnerships, and research training; support innovative biomedical and behavioral, clinical, or population-based research and intervention and prevention studies that contribute to either the improvement of minority health, the elimination of health disparities, or both. Total amount expected to be awarded in FY 2012 is $24-28 million, spread across 16 to 18 awards. For more information about NIMHD funding opportunities, click here and here.

CMS Requests Nominations for Advisory Panel on Outreach and Education

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced that the charter of the Advisory Panel on Medicare Education (APME), renamed the Advisory Panel on Outreach and Education (APOE), has been renewed and that the scope of the charter has been expanded. The panel will provide advice to CMS on developing and implementing education programs that support individuals who are not only eligible for Medicare, but who also are eligible for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The expansion of this Charter also includes advising on education of providers and stakeholders with respect to healthcare reform and certain provisions of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). More information about the nomination process is available in the Federal Register notice, click here.

Coalition Urges Policymakers to Protect FDA Role

A coalition of drug-makers and consumer advocates is spreading the word about the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) role in the national economy as Republicans weigh sharp cuts to the agency. The white paper from the Alliance for a Stronger FDA aims to inform policy-makers on Capitol Hill and in the Executive branch about the agency's reach. The paper notes that FDA-regulated industries account for almost 25 percent of consumer spending in the United States, and that the FDA oversees about 167,000 registered domestic food establishments, as it also monitors 254,000 sites overseas that are involved in the production and processing of imported food. Click here for the full paper.

NIST and HHS to Co-Host Conference on HIPAA Security

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) are co-hosting the 4th annual conference, "Safeguarding Health Information: Building Assurance through HIPAA Security," on May 10-11, 2011, at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, DC. The conference will explore the current health information technology security landscape and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Security Rule. For more information, click here.

Special Issue on HIT Ethics from AMA

With the release of its Position Paper on HIT vendors and ethical practices in JAMIA last fall, AMIA highlighted its stance on ethical issues related to HIT. The American Medical Association (AMA) devotes the March 2011 issue of their journal for medical residents and students, Virtual Mentor, to this subject. The online publication is a useful resource not only for students but for anyone who wishes to examine these issues for the first time. There’s also an interesting poll on ethics and meaningful use to fill out online. Review the publication and then share it with your mentees and colleagues by clicking here.

ACMI Fellow Chairs International Symposium

The 24th IEEE International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS) will be held in Bristol, UK, June 27-30. CBMS is accepting paper submissions until April 20. ACMI Fellow Jonathan C. Silverstein, MD, MS, FACS, also Vice President and Clinical Research Informatics Head at the Center for Clinical and Research Informatics (CCRI) Research Institute, NorthShore University HealthSystem, is one of the General Chairs of the symposium. For more information, click here.