Bruce A. Luxon, Ph.D. Director, Biomedical Informatics Institute for Translational Science Professor, Dept. of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology University of Texas Medical Branch UTMB Biomedical Informatics Activities, Plans & Challenges 28 October 2009IKFC F2F Meeting

Biomedical Informatics Resource Director: Bruce A. Luxon, PhD Barriers Addressed: Biomedical Informatics-related programs developed independently as silos Inter-operability of database systems, especially between institutions, non-existent IS departments traditionally have had neither the mission nor the skills to tackle the needs of Biomedical Informatics or Biostatistics Much valuable information is left undiscovered Competition for trained BMI faculty is fierce, thus Training is a priority ITS BMI activity The Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) is a registered trademark of DHHS Mission: To enhance the efficiency and quality of clinical and translational research by providing infrastructure, expertise and training in Biomedical Informatics Transformational Approaches: Continue to grow Biomedical Informatics as an integrated Center of Excellence Create a multi-institutional, shared biomedical data environment with access to both basic science (e.g. Omics) and clinical data Grow the BioIT function to support biomedical research’s computational and web-based relational database needs for the ITS Establish a deep data-mining infrastructure Expand our Informatics educational structure

Strengths Strong, long-standing institutional culture of collaboration: GCC… Outstanding breadth of well-funded Institutes and Centers –ITS, IHII, IMH, SCSB, SCMM, SCCCB, SCA, SCVD, SCMC, SDC, … Highly-developed institutional Core structure (>34 to date) BioIT: Joint partnership between IS & BMI Early adopter of EMR & leader in Telemedicine technologies –Very, very large pool of electronic patient & CMC data (>15 years) –World’s largest Electronic Health Network for Telemedicine Early adopter of Omics technologies –Several Nat’l Centers of Excellence in Proteomics: CPC, NHLBI, etc… Leader in Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Disease research –Galveston National Lab for Biodefense: Only national laboratory in Texas –Western Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases: > 30 institutions in TALON (region VI) –NIAID Clinical Proteomics Center

Biomedical Informatics Structure JC-PBMI* Shared Staff ITS CBMI *Joint Center for Personalized Biomedical Informatics ‡ Graduate Program in Personalized Biomedical Informatics GP-PBMI ‡ Data Education Inter- CTSA GCCGCC TX CTSA

Current Emphasis Added three new tenure-track Bioinformatics faculty last year Actively recruiting three new Medical Informatics faculty Support growth of our ITS infrastructure Support our Multi-Disciplinary Translational Teams (MTTs) –Phenotypes of Severe Asthma –Burns Injury and Response –Hepatitis C-Hepatocellular CA –Pediatric Mucosal Infections Continue to aggressively grow our BioIT Core Participate strongly in the National & Texas CTSA efforts –Multi-Institutional Data Sharing: JCPBMI, … –CPRIT: Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas ($3B/10 yrs) –Trans-Texas Biobanking initiative –Obesity & its Metabolic Complications –Aging Muscle and Sarcopenia –Arboviral Vaccine Development –Reproductive Women's Health

Plans & Challenges Plans: Expanding Medical Informatics as rapidly as possible: –Currently recruiting three new tenure-track faculty Expand Educational programs aggressively, leveraging off strategic partners Expanding informatics support for Mass Spec-based quantitative proteomics: –A key technology in several MTTs –Recruiting a “Star” senior faculty member in Mass Spec Developing a Deep Data Mining Resource Adopting Semantic Web Technologies Increasing interaction with TACC for HPC & large scale data analysis Challenges: So much to do, so few to do it, and so little time… So what else is new? Hurricane Ike Recovery: Faster & better than we could have ever imagined Time and effort required to ramp-up supporting infrastructure: MSPS, etc. Dearth of well-qualified faculty and staff candidates for open positions Dearth of well-qualified students to recruit for educational programs