PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Informatics = essential M.D. competency

JAMA article recommends biomedical informatics in education of physicians

Informatics = essential M.D. competency
2010-09-15
(Press-News.org) In an article published in the Sept. 15 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, (JAMA), author Edward H. Shortliffe, MD, PhD, points out that although information underlies all clinical work, and despite the growing role that information management and access play in healthcare delivery and clinical support, there is a dearth of informatics competency being developed in America's future corps of physicians. Formalized education in the application of informatics and the use and methodologies of health information technology and exchange, Dr. Shortliffe observes, is not typically a specific part of medical education.

In his article, "Biomedical Informatics in the Education of Physicians," Dr. Shortliffe writes that knowledge management is key to clinical decision-making and yet "a coherent approach to information and knowledge management and their application has generally not been part of medical education." He identifies and defines the formal discipline missing from medical school curricula: biomedical and health informatics, defined as "the interdisciplinary, scientific field that studies and pursues the effective uses of biomedical data, information, and knowledge for scientific inquiry, problem-solving and decision-making, motivated by efforts to improve human health."

Biomedical informatics has four major areas of applications, Dr. Shortliffe writes: bioinformatics, encompassing molecular and cellular processes; imaging informatics (of tissues and organ systems); clinical informatics, which relates to individuals and patients; and public health informatics, which focuses on populations and society (e.g., disease control, epidemic surveillance, vaccine development). More specific subareas also contribute to the major applications: nursing informatics, pharmacogenomics, and consumer health informatics, to name a few.

Dr. Shortliffe observes that medical students need to learn both the practical applied side of informatics and the core concepts that will remain valuable throughout careers practicing medicine or conducting research in the computer age. To function successfully as physicians, medical students also need to learn about the value and role of online bibliographic databases, the role of order-entry systems, electronic health records, regional data exchanges, telemedicine and other current informatics applications in health and medicine, says Shortliffe.

"Biomedical informatics is not a topic that is optimally taught in a single course during the preclinical years," says Dr. Shortliffe, "but rather should be blended into the four-year curriculum. . ..with the use of clinical examples and challenges to motivate and direct the grasp of informatics concepts."



INFORMATION:



Dr. Shortliffe is a professor in the School of Biomedical Informatics at UTHealth, Houston, and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Biomedical Informatics. He is also President and CEO of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), the leading professional association of informatics professionals and an important player in medicine, health care, and science, that serves as the voice of the nation's top biomedical and health informatics professionals.


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Informatics = essential M.D. competency

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

A proven tool for losing weight: Reading food labels

A proven tool for losing weight: Reading food labels
2010-09-15
PULLMAN, Wash.—Diet and exercise have long been the top two elements of effective weight loss. Now add a third: reading the labels on packaged foods. Washington State University Economist Bidisha Mandal has found that middle-aged Americans who want to lose weight and who take up the label-reading habit are more likely to lose weight than those who don't. In some cases, label reading is even more effective than exercise. "I'm finding that reading labels is useful," said Mandal, an assistant professor in the WSU School of Economic Sciences. "People who are trying to lose ...

Learning to live on land: How some early plants overcame an evolutionary hurdle

Learning to live on land: How some early plants overcame an evolutionary hurdle
2010-09-15
The diversity of life that can be seen in environments ranging from the rainforests of the Amazon to the spring blooms of the Mohave Desert is awe-inspiring. But this diversity would not be possible if the ancestors of modern plants had just stayed in the water with their green algal cousins. Moving onto dry land required major lifestyle changes to adapt to this new "hostile" environment, and in turn helped change global climate and atmospheric conditions to conditions we recognize today. By absorbing carbon while making food, and releasing oxygen, early plants shaped ecosystems ...

Glaciers help high-latitude mountains grow taller

Glaciers help high-latitude mountains grow taller
2010-09-15
Glaciers can help actively growing mountains become higher by protecting them from erosion, according to a University of Arizona-led research team. The finding is contrary to the conventional view of glaciers as powerful agents of erosion that carve deep fjords and move massive amounts of sediment down mountains. Mountains grow when movements of the Earth's crust push the rocks up. The research is the first to show that the erosion effect of glaciers – what has been dubbed the "glacial buzzsaw" – reverses on mountains in colder climates. The researchers were surprised, ...

Nature study shows how molecules escape from the nucleus

Nature study shows how molecules escape from the nucleus
2010-09-15
September 15, 2010 – (BRONX, NY) – By constructing a microscope apparatus that achieves resolution never before possible in living cells, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have illuminated the molecular interactions that occur during one of the most important "trips" in all of biology: the journey of individual messenger Ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecules from the nucleus into the cytoplasm (the area between the nucleus and cell membrane) so that proteins can be made. The results, published in the September 15 online edition of Nature, ...

Glaciers boost mountain growth in Andes

2010-09-15
New Haven, Conn.—Glaciers have carved some of the planet's most dramatic landscapes, from Yosemite National Park to the Himalayas. Now geologists have discovered that glaciers can do more than erode mountain peaks and shape valleys—they can actually encourage mountain growth. A new study, which appears in the September 16 issue of Nature, found that glaciers in the southern reaches of the Patagonian Andes have acted as a kind of protective shield throughout the mountain range's 25-million-year history, providing the first evidence to contradict the widely held belief ...

Nature publishes results of gene therapy treatment in phase 1/2 beta-thalassemia study

2010-09-15
Cambridge, Mass., September 15, 2010 – bluebird bio (formerly Genetix Pharmaceuticals Inc.) an emerging leader in the development of innovative gene therapies for severe genetic disorders, today announced publication in the journal Nature of its promising Phase 1/2 data highlighting positive results of LentiGlobin™ gene therapy treatment in a young adult with severe beta-thalassemia, a blood disorder that is one of the most frequent inherited diseases. The patient, who had been transfusion dependent since early childhood, has become transfusion independent for the past ...

King's College London reveals promising techniques for extending the life of an organ transplant

2010-09-15
Experts from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Centre for Transplantation at King's College London, based at Guy's Hospital, have revealed exciting new scientific developments for people with an organ transplant, intended to help prevent rejection of the new organ and extend its life. Although organ transplantation has been taking place for over 50 years, there are a number of significant challenges, such as a shortage of donor organs, maintaining the quality of an organ in transit, and the risk of organ rejection both immediately after transplant and in the following ...

Mount Sinai researchers develop database to help accelerate drug discovery

2010-09-15
Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine have developed a new computational method that will help streamline the analysis of gene expression experiments and provide scientists with a better mechanistic understanding of the differences between diseased and normal cells. The new database and software, called ChIP Enrichment Analysis (ChEA), will revolutionize how researchers identify drug targets and biomarkers. Researchers can find the tool online at http://amp.pharm.mssm.edu/lib/chea.jsp. The data are published in the September 15th issue of Bioinformatics. Until ...

Discovery highlights promise of new immune system-based therapies

2010-09-15
BOSTON--A new focus on the immune system's ability to both unleash and restrain its attack on disease has led Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists to identify cells in mice that prevent the immune system from attacking the animals' own cells, protecting them from autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, and lupus. The discovery, reported online on Sept. 16 by the journal Nature, may give scientists an effective way of operating the immune system's internal "control panel," leading to improved therapies for a variety of diseases – from vaccines ...

Home's electrical wiring acts as antenna to receive low-power sensor data

Homes electrical wiring acts as antenna to receive low-power sensor data
2010-09-15
If these walls had ears, they might tell a homeowner some interesting things. Like when water is dripping into an attic crawl space, or where an open window is letting hot air escape during winter. The walls do have ears, thanks to a device that uses a home's electrical wiring as a giant antenna. Sensors developed by researchers at the University of Washington and the Georgia Institute of Technology use residential wiring to transmit information to and from almost anywhere in the home, allowing for wireless sensors that run for decades on a single watch battery. The technology, ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Sensitive ceramics for soft robotics

Trends in hospitalizations and liver transplants associated with alcohol-induced liver disease

Spinal cord stimulation vs medical management for chronic back and leg pain

Engineered receptors help the immune system home in on cancer

How conflicting memories of sex and starvation compete to drive behavior

Scientists discover ‘entirely unanticipated’ role of protein netrin1 in spinal cord development

Novel SOURCE study examining development of early COPD in ages 30 to 55

NRL completes development of robotics capable of servicing satellites, enabling resilience for the U.S. space infrastructure

Clinical trial shows positive results for potential treatment to combat a challenging rare disease

New research shows relationship between heart shape and risk of cardiovascular disease

Increase in crisis coverage, but not the number of crisis news events

New study provides first evidence of African children with severe malaria experiencing partial resistance to world’s most powerful malaria drug

Texting abbreviations makes senders seem insincere, study finds

Living microbes discovered in Earth’s driest desert

Artemisinin partial resistance in Ugandan children with complicated malaria

When is a hole not a hole? Researchers investigate the mystery of 'latent pores'

ETRI, demonstration of 8-photon qubit chip for quantum computation

Remote telemedicine tool found highly accurate in diagnosing melanoma

New roles in infectious process for molecule that inhibits flu

Transforming anion exchange membranes in water electrolysis for green hydrogen production

AI method can spot potential disease faster, better than humans

A development by Graz University of Technology makes concreting more reliable, safer and more economical

Pinpointing hydrogen isotopes in titanium hydride nanofilms

Political abuse on X is a global, widespread, and cross-partisan phenomenon, suggests new study

Reintroduction of resistant frogs facilitates landscape-scale recovery in the presence of a lethal fungal disease

Scientists compile library for evaluating exoplanet water

Updated first aid guidelines enhance care for opioid overdose, bleeding, other emergencies

Revolutionizing biology education: Scientists film ‘giant’ mimivirus in action

Genetic variation enhances cancer drug sensitivity

Protective genetic mutation offers new hope for understanding autism and brain development

[Press-News.org] Informatics = essential M.D. competency
JAMA article recommends biomedical informatics in education of physicians