Medical Informatics Takes
Center Stage with Bush Bioterrorism Agenda
Washington, DC, February
6, 2001 - President George W. Bush, the National Homeland Defense Secretary,
Tom Ridge, and Health and Human Services Secretary, Tommy Thompson visited
the University of Pittsburgh (UP) yesterday to review one of the advanced
developments in medical informatics - a collaboration of the University's
Center for Biomedical Informatics and Carnegie Mellon University. The project,
known as the Real-Time Outbreak and Disease Surveillance system (RODS), is
an early warning system for outbreaks of disease designed to obtain and analyze
existing sources of data in real time. Lead researchers are Michael Wagner,
MD, PhD, Director of the RODS Laboratory, Fu-Chang Tsui, Ph.D., and Jeremy
Espino, MD.
The University's Center for Biomedical Informatics and its faculty are
among the nation's leadership in medical informatics, an emerging field that
has to do with the organizing, analyzing, managing, and using of information
in health care. While the field of medical informatics shares the general
scope of these interests with some other health care specialties and disciplines,
medical informatics has developed its own areas of emphasis and approaches
and has been particularly at the forefront in emphasizing computer and communications
technologies as integral in improving healthcare.
With regard to the President's enthusiasm of the work being done in Pittsburgh,
Dr. Wagner stated: "I was impressed that President Bush, Mr. Ridge, and
Secretary Thompson understood the need for early warning systems for biological
attacks and, moreover, took the effort to come to Pittsburgh to focus national
attention on that objective. The success of our work depends on the voluntary
cooperation of many organizations and friends in Pittsburgh, Harrisburg,
Salt Lake City, and Philadelphia, and it helps for them to know that the
nation appreciates their vision and efforts."
"RODS signals the importance of properly architected, standards-based,
'informatics solutions' to the complex problems we face in public health and
health care generally" stated Charles P. Friedman, PhD, Director of the University
of Pittsburgh's Center for Biomedical Informatics and a Board member of the
American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) -- an international association
of researchers, system developers, and practitioners in medical informatics.
Among its other activities, AMIA has recently created a National Health
Threats Task Force that has been an active voice in advocating for a national
health information system in the fight against national health threats.
A link to the
transcript of President Bush's script is available on the AMIA Web site
, along with other information and links regarding the AMIA National Health
Threats Task Force.
Drs. Wagner, Tsui, and Espino are AMIA members, and Dr. Espino is a current
fellow in the Center's
Biomedical Informatics Training Program
.
The University of Pittsburgh's Center for Biomedical Informatics is an
AMIA Institutional member. Specific information on the
RODS Laboratory