Program in Biomedical Informatics
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Degree Programs | Training support | Application Process | Glossary
1.
Introduction
Biomedical Informatics (BMI) in the Boston area has a long tradition,
with a wide variety of activity underway in laboratories at Harvard, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), as well as other universities, and at a number
of hospitals affiliated with these universities. For over a decade, the Harvard-MIT
Division of Health Sciences & Technology (HST) has served as the focal
point for cooperation among various BMI groups, and has been the home of a
growing range of research training programs, courses, and graduate degree
programs.
This website introduces BMI in Boston, with particular emphasis on the
programs in which HST plays a coordinating role. Since BMI is a rapidly growing and developing area, it is not possible
to be comprehensive, and there are likely to be a number of Boston area
activities that are not included.
Further, as noted below, the definition of BMI is a very broad one. Thus, depending on what one chooses to
include under the rubric, the range of activities enumerated may differ.
1.1
Definition and
scope of Biomedical Informatics
Definition: Biomedical Informatics (BMI) is the field that concerns itself with the
cognitive, information processing, and communication tasks of biomedical
research, health care practice, and education, including the information
science and technology to support these tasks.
BMI is both a science and engineering activity:
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Science: Modeling and analyzing
(1)
biomedical phenomena or processes
(2)
human reasoning processes applied to them
e.g.,
gene expression, protein structure, clinical diagnostic process, epidemic
outbreak patterns,
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Engineering: Building of systems
(1)
to organize data and knowledge
(2)
to represent models or processes
(3)
to perform analyses or aid human problem solving
e.g.,
GenBank, pharmacokinetics, clinical information systems, DXplain, virtual
human,
Inasmuch as biomedicine encompasses research at molecular, cellular,
organ system, human, or population levels, and includes health care practice,
and population-based practice such as disease prevention and public health, BMI
includes informatics aspects of all of the above.
The definition of BMI emphasizes the spectrum of pursuits encompassed
by the field, both in terms of sources of data, problems of interest, and kinds
of methods used. The diagram below
indicates (in blue) the somewhat separate areas of informatics research that
have arisen in recent years, based on those distinctions. The term BMI as we
use it here is meant to include all of these separate foci plus others, as well
as a number of intersections among those foci (in red).
Together, these foci come closer to portraying the spectrum of BMI, and
reflect the changing nature of biomedical science. The diagram emphasizes
the need to transcend artificial boundaries of nomenclature of fields, as
interesting questions relate to problems at the intersections of subfields.
1.2
Underlying
principles
With regard to defining a field of BMI in terms of a set of principles that
form the basis for its educational content, a number of broad informatics
problems are common across the various subfields, and must be addressed by
similar methodologies. Examples of
these broad informatics problems and the associated methodologies are:
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Data and
knowledge representation
Standard
vocabularies/taxonomies, structures for storage
Methods of data and knowledge integration from distributed repositories
to enable development of complex models and systems
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Data analysis,
presentation, and machine learning
Modeling and simulation
Multi-dimensional
data visualization
Supervised
and unsupervised learning and knowledge discovery
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Data and knowledge
management
Tools
and resources to facilitate research and education
e.g.,
databases, knowledge bases, tool libraries
User-specific
problem solving environments and collaborative environments
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Ethics, privacy, and
confidentiality
Tools
to manage security, anonymization, IRB approval, etc.
Thus, while the different areas of application
of informatics encompassed by BMI have a number of specific features and
requirements, there is in addition a set of core knowledge and skills that
appear to be fundamental for all practitioners of BMI.
1.3
Importance of BMI in the academic medical
center
A variety of factors have contributed to the
growing emphasis on developing BMI centers, programs, and departments in
academic medical centers. Among the most important reasons appear to be
the following:
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Changing nature of biomedical research and growth of big
science
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Health care delivery changes: enterprise integration,
quality initiatives
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Consumer health initiatives
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Educational technology opportunities
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Public health agendas
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Issues of privacy and confidentiality and the ability to do
research
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Progress in information technology and communications as a
driver
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Business as well as research opportunities
Degree Programs | Training support | Application Process | Glossary