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Research Centers
2012-2014 Student Handbook

The Center for Biosecurity and Public Health Informatics Research Center for Computational Biomedicine
Gulf Coast Regional Extension Center National Center for Cognitive Informatics and Decision Making in Healthcare

The Center for Biosecurity and Public Health Informatics Research

The Center for Biosecurity and Public Health Informatics Research (CBPHIR) was established by SBMI to coordinate research and development of next generation informatics infrastructures and technological platforms relevant to the public health preparedness, bioterrorism readiness, emergency response and situation awareness.

The Center promotes collaborative research and technology development activities in the context of:

  • Bioterrorism Preparedness (Situation Awareness), Emergency Response and Command, Control and Communication, in City, County, State and National levels.
  • Education, Training and Drill for emergency response and mass casualty event preparedness, using state of the art information technologies
  • Community Awareness and Public Preparedness Services
  • Biomedical, Clinical and Public Health Informatics

The primary mission and objectives of the Center are to be the pioneering research entity nation- wide, designing and developing the next generation of information systems and emergency response management infrastructure for public health preparedness. The center promotes a multidisciplinary collaboration environment between university researchers, private enterprises and government agencies to provide state of the art technologies, research and development infrastructures and training, education and drill opportunities for the students, scientists, and for the community.

This overall mission is supported by three other goals that differentiate this effort from other local initiatives:

  1. To establish a “Center of Excellence” from a cluster of scientists, researchers and students of different domains to:
    1. Identify needs and develop the rationale to deploy new technologies.
    2. Provide a continuous source of grant support.
    3. Collaborate within an inter-disciplinary program to translate or transfer technologies from different domains.
  2. Establish an advanced and state-of-the-art training and learning laboratory to simulate, experiment and study public health and environmental incidents in a multi-disciplinary environment.
  3. Develop technologies relevant to community services to enhance vigilance, awareness and public preparedness.

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Center for Computational Biomedicine

Over the past several years, computational issues for technology-driven biomedical research have proliferated. The Center for Computational Biomedicine (CBM) at SBMI pursues collaborative, interdisciplinary research and education within the broadly defined scientific area of computational biomedicine. This new discipline is defined by and indeed resides upon the interface between the computational sciences (i.e., signal analysis, data mining and computer science in general) and a wide variety of biomedical disciplines including neuroscience, genomics, cardiology and structural biology to name a few. Fundamentally, CBM addresses the modeling, acquisition, processing and long-term storage of the ever-increasing volume of biomedical information.

The Center for CBM encourages the development of collaborative relationships among faculty and others around research and education in CBM related to the mission of the university. The Center for CBM emphasizes the highly interdisciplinary nature of this emerging scientific discipline in health care and biomedical research. The Executive Committee of the Center is composed of representatives from each of the other five UTHealth schools.

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Gulf Coast Regional Extension Center

The mission of the Gulf Coast Regional Extension Center (GCREC) is to facilitate safe, effective, and meaningful use of state-of-the-art health information technology by all healthcare providers in the region by focusing on primary care practices and their integration with local, state, and federal Health Information Exchange activities with the ultimate goal of improving the health of the citizens they serve. The Center's priority is helping providers fully understand and take advantage of the full benefits of electronic health records. The Center enables providers to achieve meaningful use objectives, minimize financial and administrative burdens, reduce costs associated with medical errors, improve patient safety and quality of care and prepare and position providers for future pay for performance.

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National Center for Cognitive Informatics and Decision Making in Healthcare

National Center for Cognitive Informatics and Decision Making in Healthcare (NCCD) is funded by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT under the Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) Program, which seeks to support improvements in the quality, safety and efficiency of health care through advanced information technology.

NCCD carries out interdisciplinary research projects to address the cognitive challenges identified by ONC which include:

  • Work-Centered Design
  • Cognitive Foundations for Decision Making
  • Adaptive Decision Support
  • Model-based Data Summarization
  • Visualization and Distributed Team Work

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