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University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey GOVERNANCE & MANAGEMENT Leadership • In June 2004, the IAIMS Project welcomed Mr. Wayne Thompson, the new Vice President for Information Services and Technology (IST), as an IAIMS Co-Director. Formerly at Thomas Jefferson University, Mr. Thompson was already familiar with the IAIMS program prior to his arrival at UMDNJ. He has appointed four governance groups to advise IST in identifying and establishing IT program and budgetary priorities in the administrative, clinical, education and research areas. • Fifteen outstanding UMDNJ and Rutgers informatics researchers have joined the Informatics Institute as members, during its initial recruitment phase. Members and their brief biographies can be viewed at http://informatics.umdnj.edu/institute/members/ • The Informatics Institute continues to actively pursue collaborative projects both within and outside UMDNJ. The Institute leadership has been very effective in garnering informatics research dollars. Currently funded projects total $10 million, and the Institute leadership currently has pending grant applications totaling over $14 million. FACILITIES, INFRASTRUCTURE & ACCESS TO RESOURCES • The University’s ongoing program to maintain and improve the networks throughout UMDNJ has been furthered recently by upgrades at several campus sites. The legacy shared network environment operating at a maximum of 10 mbps has been converted to a high-speed switched network serviced by a Gigabit Ethernet backbone with switched 10/100 network ports. • Secure wireless network connectivity is becoming increasingly available in select common gathering locations such as student lounges, faculty lounges, library locations and designated outside areas on each campus. IST is also working on the implementation of an enhanced voice/data/video computer network that provides both Internet2 access and videoconferencing from the desktop, among other services. • The University’s recent adoption of the SCT Luminis Platform portal, infrastructure and enterprise application suite furthers its goal of providing seamless integration of administrative and other information databases, and supporting user single sign-on. • The University Libraries are implementing an open URL solution (SFX) to streamline access to disparate electronic resources regardless of vendor or interface. The system uses smart linking and metadata tagging to provide users with seamless, single-point access to all resources. The PubMed LinkOut project has also been completed for all electronic holdings of the UMDNJ libraries; a specially designed logo has been incorporated for easy identification. COMMUNICATIONS AND OUTREACH Symposia & Conferences • The Crucial Role of Informatics in BioDefense and Counter-terrorism, Symposium, May 12, 2004, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Newark, NJ. Informatics Institute and UMDNJ Center for BioDefense, co-sponsors. Program available at http://informatics.umdnj.edu/institute/events/IAIMS0405/ • CE course on Integrating Molecular Biology Databases into the Health Care Informatics Environment, May 26, 2004, Medical Library Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC. Taught by the Informatics Institute Associate Director for Education and University librarians. • Scientific Program for the National Conference on Pathology Informatics, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, Oct. 6-8, 2004. Organized and chaired by the Informatics Institute Associate Director for Research. • Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), Convention Center, Washington, DC, April 17 -21, 2004. Informatics Institute Associate Director for Research, invited speaker on imaging informatics. • Second Annual Conference of NJEDge.Net, Collaboration through Networking, October 11-13, 2004, Plainsboro, New Jersey. Electronic posters on Bioinformatics Training in a Secure Linux Environment and Life Cycle of an IAIMS Project: Developing a Faculty Development Program, by the Institute Associate Director for Education and the IAIMS Coordinator, respectively. • NCBI Field Guide to GenBank and NCBI Molecular Biology Resources, March 3 & 4, 2005, UMDNJ Newark campus. Informatics Institute, University Libraries, UMDNJ Graduate Student Association and the Postdoctoral Student Association, co-sponsors. • A focus of the University Libraries HealthyNJ Consumer Health Web Site over the past year has been the expansion of Spanish language resources. There are currently 113 topics in Spanish in the Diseases & Conditions and Health & Wellness portals of the web site (http://www.healthynj.org). • In April 2004, the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology approved a $250,000 grant to UMDNJ to improve clinical research infrastructure at UMDNJ and promote collaboration with the State’s life sciences industry. A portion of the funding is allocated to complete the construction of a clinical research and training Web site. EDUCATION Faculty Development & Educational Technology Mini-grant Program • Under the direction of the Educational Technology Subcommittee of AcITAC, the faculty development program dedicated to producing Web-based interdisciplinary clinical case studies is making good progress. During eight hands-on sessions held from September 2004 through March 2005, participants received an orientation to the DxR case simulation software and its various functions, including its assessment tools; explored the sample case both as a student and as an instructor; were trained in case text and image editing; and obtained from the University Libraries a list of Web-accessible, quality-filtered scholarly resources that may be used to enrich case content. • The Foundation of UMDNJ once again provided $100,000 this year to maintain an expanded scope for the IAIMS-supported AcITAC Educational Technology Mini-grant program. Twelve projects have been funded in the past eight months. Graduate Program in Bioinformatics • The Graduate Program in Bioinformatics, offered in conjunction with the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences degree, continues to demonstrate dramatic growth under the direction of Dr. Bruce Byrne, the Informatics Institute Associate Director for Education. Since the initiation of the Graduate Concentration in Bioinformatics in the fall semester of 2002, 122 students have availed themselves of core course offerings, occupying 209 seats. Updated information on the program can be obtained from the Informatics Institute Web site at http://informatics.umdnj.edu/bioinformatics/. Four courses in the Fundamentals of Bioinformatics are being offered for the first time this spring in the WebCT online learning format. University Libraries Collaborative Educational Initiatives • A Physicians Core Toolkit, http://www.umdnj.edu/librweb/newarklib/pctk/pctk.html, has been developed by University librarians for the New Jersey Medical School (NJMS) Physicians’ Core course. This module has applicability across the curriculum of the various UMDNJ schools that engage in clinical decision-making processes. Library staff partnered with faculty from NJMS and the School of Health Related Professions (SHRP) to produce a WebCT course on various aspects of evidence-based practice. CLINICAL Electronic Health Records & Clinical Data Repositories • Clinical systems implementation objectives identified in the IAIMS Operational Phase Grant are moving forward according to schedule. Transition from OACIS, the previous University Hospital (UH) in-patient clinical data repository, to EPIC, has proceeded smoothly. EPIC is both a clinical data repository and a fully functioning electronic health record (EHR), containing computerized physician order entry (CPOE). Addition of an EPIC Pharmacy Information System is now under consideration in an effort to provide greater safety and integration to the electronic ordering of medications. The Logician ambulatory EHR database is a large, rapidly updated (real time) patient database with HEDIS compliant security, and is currently in use at all three clinical campuses (Newark, New Brunswick and Stratford; it has been used for some clinical research projects. Ongoing work is focusing on the development of data standards across practices, in order to gather consistent and coherent data for decision support, outcomes management and clinical research. There are plans to establish a separate clinical data warehouse for research under the auspices of the Informatics Institute that would pool data from all clinical sites; this project has gained strong support from the new president of UMDNJ. Clinical Informatics & Best Practices • A collaborative group under the direction of Dr. Frank Sonnenberg, Associate Director for Clinical Informatics of the Informatics Institute has been carrying out a University-wide project to implement ambulatory best practices, focusing initially on the HEDIS effectiveness of care guidelines. The “best practices” collaborative effort has been coordinated with an ongoing research project (Hypertext Guideline Markup Language, HGML) to develop computer-based implementation of clinical guidelines within the EHR. Efforts have extended to the entire set of HEDIS 2005 effectiveness of care measures. • The “micro-CME” project, begun last year as an AcITAC mini-grant, has continued to develop a system for awarding small increments of continuing medical education (CME) credits to clinicians who review decision support content in the EHR. • In early 2005, a university-wide system for secure e-mail (ZixCorp) was introduced as part of the strategy to comply with HIPAA privacy rules. Computer security was enhanced through other technologies as well, including gradual improvement of the enterprise firewall, enterprise virus protection and establishment of a secure virtual private network (VPN) to permit remote access to university computer resources, including clinical systems. |
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