Research Projects

The class will have to complete research projects. The idea behind research projects is that the class will learn a variety of techniques in lectures and their project will involve them thinking about how to apply some of these techniques to solve some clinically relevant problems. The problems of interest in this class are as follows

1. Design an EMR that includes genetic information and decision support. As we move towards the brave new world of clinically relevant genetic information (not any of that finding gene for chocolate liking stuff!), it is important to start envisioning EMR of the future that included genetic information. However the perils are many... doctors practicing may not know enough about genetic information, reliability of information is an issue, knowledge discovery is required and privacy is a concern. This project would look at how you would go about building such an EMR and conducting research on its design, development and evaluation

2. Take-home Medical Education. Medical Education is increasingly becoming a major challenge facing the educational community. This project will focus on how biomedical informatics can help. Specifically the project will focus on what does it take to build an information architecture that supports take-home or offline medical education. Today it is virtually impossible to teach medical students and residents everything in class: not the least of which are technical skills. In this project students will enlist strategies and requirements for supporting take home education. Further they will also define methodologies to test this architecture and its effectiveness in offering robust medical skills and knowledge.

3. Coordinated Large Scale Testing and Evaluation of Medical Devices. Medical devices are increasingly permeating our world. Today blood sugar monitors, EKG monitors are commonly available for at home usage. Other type of medical devices such as cardiac stents are critical and important part of healthcare. Each of these devices need to be tested and often in large scale multi-institution studies. How can informatics help? This project will look at design, development and evaluation of informatics architecture to test medical devices.

4. Social Networks for Clinical Collaboration. Well we use these for a lot of purposes including finding the long lost girlfriend, but can we develop social networks for clinical collaborations. What are the challenges and can we use novel technologies such as SecondLife to do this.

5. Neuroinformatics. Computational neuroscience is a burgeoning field and is producing massive quantities of data. The big question that faces this field now is how can the data that is being produced stored, standardized, shared and used for further knowledge discovery. Looks like a potentially excellent area for BMI students to test their research skills!