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Newsletter, Summer 2010
DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE
Recent CAIM activities have been well received and
helpful to the community we serve. At the New York
Academy of Sciences we sponsored a Technology
Forum in February 2010 on electronic health records
that attracted 175 attendees who heard distinguished
speakers from industry, academia, and government
present various scenarios that will impact healthcare
delivery. CAIM again co-sponsored HatchMatch a
speed-dating like event that provides a venue for
entrepreneurs and financiers to meet. A CAIM team
attended the Annual HIMSS meeting and generated
interest in our programs, especially a new certificate
program in medical informatics that will be
supported by a $3.8M federal award to develop
workforce training programs. We also sponsored a
reception at the New York Academy of Medicine on
May 3 where former CAIM Director Ted Shortliffe
joined Rachel Block (NYS Department of Health) and
me to discuss an Update on Medical IT: What Every
Health Professional Needs to Know."
Our Center is one of two NYSTAR CATs (Centers for
Advanced Technology) that are at the end of their
current contract term. In spite of significant budget
problems in the State, the CAT program has received
enthusiastic support from both the Governor and
Legislature. One reason is that collectively last year
the 15 CATs generated $527 million in documented
economic impact to NYS companies reflecting a
return on investment in excess of 35:1. We are
confident that the program will continue to serve the
technology innovation industry in New York.
George Hripcsak, MD, MS
ECONOMIC IMPACT PERFORMANCE
NYSTAR’s 2009 Annual Report lists achievements of
its 15 Centers for Advanced Technology (CATs) as
well as other economic development programs. We
are pleased to report that we (CAIM) were ranked
second in 5-year total economic impact with a value
of $265,803,880.
SAVE THE DATE
Current Issues in Biomedical Informatics – our
annual technology update will be held on
October 5, 2010. Co-sponsored with Pfizer, and at
their NYC headquarters, the events will feature
speakers from all sectors to discuss advances,
problems and issues. There is no fee but
preregistration is required. See CAIM webpage
for information and preregistration details.
PEOPLE
Andrew Laine, DSc, (Professor and Vice Chair,
Biomedical Engineering and Radiology)
was elevated to Fellow of the IEEE,
effective, January 2010. The IEEE Board
cited his contributions to wavelet
applications in digital mammography,
and ultrasound image analysis.
David Shaw, PhD (Adjunct Professor,
DBMI) won the 2009 Supercomputer
Conference Best Paper Award, and
Gordon Bell prize, for his presentation
on the first millisecond-long all-atom
simulation of a protein, beating the
previous record by a factor of 100.
Kathleen McKeown, PhD, (Henry and Gertrude
Rothschilds Professor of Computer
Science and former CAIM Co-Director) is
one of three women in technology to win
the Anita Borg Women of Vision Award
which honors women making significant
contributions in Innovation, Leadership,
and Social Impact. Kathy was recognized for her
seminal contributions to natural language processing
within the general areas of artificial intelligence,
information extraction, and human machine interaction
Steven E. Labkoff, MD, FACP, a charter member of the
CAIM External Advisory Board,
has been elected its first Chair. The
EAB is an advisory group with
members from various industry
sectors that provides industry
perspective and guidance to the
CAIM management. Steve was also
one of the featured speakers at the
Technology Forum (February 2010) on “EHRs”.
WORKFORCE HEALTH IT TRAINING
In April the Department of Health and Human
Resources, Office of the National Coordinator for
Health Information Technology awarded Columbia’s
Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) a grant
entitled Timely Training of Workers Competent to
Support EHR Deployment and Meaningful Use. The
$3.8M award will support healthcare IT worker
training in areas that will increasingly use electronic
health records. Funds will be used to develop a
certificate program for industry workers and an
expanded MA program offered by DBMI. The PIs are
Herbert Chase, MD, MA (Professor of Clinical
Medicine in Biomedical Informatics) and Frances
Morrison, MD, MPH, MA (Associate Research
Scientist and CAIM Assistant Director for Training)
who wrote the application and is overseeing planning
and implementation. As part of its role in this
workforce training effort, CAIM applied for, and
received, a commitment from New York State for an
Innovation Economy Matching Grant. A letter from
Governor David A. Paterson pledging the 10% match
accompanied the application to HHR/ONC.
OTHER GRANTS
Jacqueline Merrill, RN, MPH, DNSc (CAIM Associate
Director for Technology; DBMI)
received several awards recently: (1) R.
W. Johnson Foundation [study the
emergence of a public health services
and systems research community; 2009-
10, $150k]; (2) Health Information
Technology Evaluation Collaborative
[(subcontract) evaluate health information exchange for
public health reporting among NYS HEAL 5 grantees;
2009-11, ~$300k/year]; and (3) NYS Public Health
Practice Based Research Network [evaluate public
health response to H1N1 in NYS counties, 2010, $25k].
Noemie Elhadad, PhD (DBMI) was awarded a Google
grant for PERSEUS: Structuring and Searching the Content
of Health-Related Web Posts.
Rita Kukafka, DrPH, MA, and Carol Friedman, PhD
(DBMI) are collaborators on an NIH Office of the
National Coordinator curriculum grant, worth $1.8M.
PAST EVENTS
A Technology Forum on EHRs: Where Do We Go From
Here?, organized with New York Academy of Sciences
took place on February 5, 2010. The successful one-day
event was attended by 175 registrants.
In March 2010 CAIM staffers Paul Goldfarb, MBA and
Frances Morrison sponsored a booth at HIMSS10, the
Annual Conference and Exhibition of the Health
Information Management and Systems Society, in
March at the Atlanta Georgia World Conference Center.
CAIM co-hosted a reception preceding a New York
Academy of Medicine event on May 3 entitled Update
on Medical IT: What Every Health Professional Needs
to Know. The speakers were Edward H. Shortliffe,
MD, PhD, President & CEO American Medical
Informatics Association and NYAM Trustee; George
Hripcsak, MD, MS, Professor and Chair of Biomedical
Informatics, and Director of the Center for Advanced
Information Management, Columbia University; and
Rachel Block, Deputy Commissioner Office of Health
Information Technology Transformation NYS
Department of Health.
CAIM again joined with various Columbia
entrepreneurship-oriented organizations and The
Hatchery to sponsor HATCH MATCH 2010. The event
is an evening of facilitated networking with leading
web, Internet, and information technology investors and
advisors in NYS. It is designed to help prospective
businesses network and access more than 30 advisors
and investors in a format that’s convenient and efficient.
NEW PROJECTS
In March, a new 2009-10 project entitled SmartPaste-
enabled Computerized Unified Patient Information
Displays was approved for funding. The PI is David
Vawdrey, PhD (Assistant Professor of Biomedical
Informatics). Frances Morrison, MD, MPH, MA (CAIM
Assistant Director for Training) is co-PI. The project is a
joint effort with NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital to
deploy an electronic documentation support tool –
SmartPaste – that automatically collects and aggregates
data from within the EHR and allows clinicians to easily
integrate pertinent information into their notes.
Recently, a second project in support of Consolidated
Edison was approved for 2009-10 funding. Secondary
Machine Learning Project will help ConEd rank their
structures for vulnerability to serious events such as
fires and explosions using machine learning. The PI is
Rebecca Passoneau, Research Scientist in the Center for
Computational Learning Systems.
Six 2010-11 industry co-sponsored grant applications
have been reviewed and awards made. The new
projects (title, PI, unit, sponsoring company) are –
• Aetna InteliHealth Mobile Web Assessment Project,
David Albert, DDS, MPH, Community Dentistry,
Aetna Dental;
• Video and Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool, Shih-Fu
Chang, PhD, Electrical Engineering, Kitware;
• Persistent Stare Exploitation and Analysis System;
Shih-Fu Chang PhD, Electrical Engineering,
Kitware;
• Adaptive Control of the Smart Grid; David Waltz,
PhD, Center for Computational Learning Systems
(CCLS), Consolidated Edison;
• A Phase 2 Evaluation of an Innovative Language Learning
System for Medical Professionals; David Kaufman, PhD,
Biomedical Informatics, LanguageMate;
• COLABA: Cross Language Arabic Blog Alerts; Mona
Diab, CCLS, Axciom Corp.
_____________________________________
For more information, call 212.305.2944 or visit www.cat.columbia.edu.
The Center for Advanced Information Management
is a NYSTAR-sponsored Center for Advanced Tec