Buffalo Research Innovation in Genomic and Healthcare Technology Education (BRIGHT Education)

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The University at Buffalo’ (UB) Department of Biomedical Informatics, with funding from our first T15 grant, is training 3 PhD students, 8 post docs (MDs and PhDs) and 7 short term trainees in biomedical informatics research. We continue our focus on: 1-health & healthcare/clinical informatics; 2-translational bioinformatics; and 3-clinical research informatics, with inclusion now on informatics of: 4-Public Health and 5-Consumer Health. The curriculum builds on our growing MS and PhD programs with our existing faculty and outside mentors in addition to world-renowned experts who provide workshops, etc. Most medical informatics research focuses on the specifics of research in implementation, technology, clinical care, etc. We do that, of course, but we also integrate the synergistic research skills and orientations needed for biomedical informatics to move our discipline beyond its current entanglements. In contrast, our department (now 7.5 years old) fits perfectly with the ethos and focus of the NLM’s research training goals. We also realize that our location in a depressed area offers us the obligation, opportunity, and privilege to recruit and train scholars so often excluded from this field. They stay in familiar settings, and bring their insights to others. Also, our affiliated scholars, researchers, practitioners, and linked institutes joins with us to train and inspire our students. We enable students to use research to understand and improve the field--analyzing the complex interactions of workflow, evaluation, CDS, usability, ethics, big data, clinical research, bioinformatics and patient care–researching biomedical informatics to help move healthcare IT to be a fluent, informed, and meaningful contribution to clinical efficiency and medical knowledge. Our PhD program is comprised of core courses, required additional courses in 1 of the 5 concentrations (“selectives”), and at least 17 credits of electives. In addition to didactic and lab courses, all students are involved in extensive research, practicums, workshops, presentations, mock IRBs and ethics reviews, EHR laboratories, patient safety and quality rounds, and human factors training. Because of students’ varying expertise, we build in flexibility to reflect pedagogic requirements while ensuring mastery of necessary knowledge, skills, judgment in our mentoring of students. Biomedical informatics continues to frustrate, despite (or because of) its extraordinary promises. Only committed and skilled researchers can help us close this gap; enabling our field to achieve what is so needed. We are so excited to continue and build on our training program. We seek to create the researcher-leaders informatics needs, deserves and has wanted. Biomedical informatics can fulfil its promise if wise and well-trained researchers guide our unbiased evaluations, policies, applications, and research agendas. The UB T15 program’s trainees have published over 118 peer reviewed manuscripts, been awarded 4 NIH grants, and 10 are now in postdoctoral fellowships or faculty positions. Overall the 29 faculty mentors have published 351 papers and been awarded, as PI or MPI, 70 grants. Our UB program is fiercely committed to training the future researchers our field deserves.