I attended the BioMedical Informatics course at the Marine Biological Laboratory(MBL), in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, September 16 – 22, 2012 with 16 librarians, 7 physicians, 6 administrators, and 1 vendor.
The most important trend was the integration of the (electronic health record) EHR into the duties of the librarian. Before this class, I did not realize the significance of this change in duties. Another intriguing development is Semantic MEDLINE beta. A Unified Medical Language License (UMLS) license at https://uts.nlm.nih.gov/license.html is required to access Semantic MEDLINE. Clinical Research Informatics introduced projects such as REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) and ResearchMatch. Consumer Informatics and Disaster Informatics were topics of interest that exceeded my expectations. Also Genetics, Genomics, and Why explained the necessity of Genetic Informatics and DNA testing.
The final project inspired me to walk unknown paths into the world of informatics. Improving the EHR computerized provider order entry (CPOE) provided lively discussions between the physicians, librarians, and IT support. We managed to gain an understanding of the language and processes between our different worlds by working together.
I would highly recommend this program to physicians, administrators involved in informatics, and all health science and hospital librarians. The MBL BioMedical Informatics course 2013 enrollment application is located on the website, http://hermes.mbl.edu/education/courses/special_topics/med.html
with course dates offered May 26 – June 1, 2013 or September 15 – 21, 2013. The deadline for the application is January 11, 2013.
Fran Kovach, M.L.I.S.
HSLI Past President (2011-12)