It is with great honor, passion, and determination that I have assumed the role to serve you as your Interim Division Chief. My hearty thanks for all of the support during this transition and able-handed team that has generously provided advisement, direction, and service.

Each of you are incredibly unique, capable, innovative, and talented members of the fabric of DBMI. As individual threads we hold promise and strength, but it is together woven into a fine tapestry that our artisanship and plasticity become more apparent. We together hold a wealth of skills that can contribute to the discovery, training, and care of our community and planet. As your interim, I welcome opportunities to serve you in advancing our mission.

Periods of change frequently invite us to honor ‘Kirei’ — a Japanese word representing cleanliness and beauty as part of our expression of compassion. We can engage in a process of decluttering, organizing, and diligently deep-cleaning our structures — both virtual and physical — processes, and actions. As a form of ‘Kaizen’, our small collective activities over time that dedicate to incremental change can build a fabric that is bright, centering, and pure that accomplishes meaningful change. Therefore, I ask each of you to reflect on your own threads of contribution to our beautiful DBMI tapestry!

Amy M. Sitapati, M.D.

Interim Chief, Division of Biomedical Informatics

Last December, UC San Diego Health deployed a state-of-the-art deep learning model for the early prediction of sepsis within its Emergency Departments. This is a major technical achievement in the fight against sepsis, the world's leading cause of mortality, and lays the foundation for a suite of artificial intelligence (AI)-based multimodal predictive analytics models trained on data representing the diverse population of patients at UCSD Health. This work was the culmination of a deep collaboration between physicians (including Dr. Gabriel Wardi, Chair Sepsis Committee), hospital IS, AWS cloud engineers, Epic analysts, and researchers from Nemati Lab at DBMI (including Aaron Boussina, NLM trainee and DBMI Ph.D. candidate, and Supreeth Prajwal Shashikumar, AI research scientist).

Shamim Nemati has accepted the PI role for the NLM T15 training grant. DBMI is one of 18 institutions to hold this award. Trainees receive exposure to a core curriculum focused on biomedical data science concepts and methods as well as develop skills needed to lead future independent research. The program was renewed in 2022 for its third five-year period. 

Robert Greenes, MD, PhD, is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics, Distinguished Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, and Fellow of the American College of Radiology and the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine. He was the 2008 recipient of the Morris F. Collen Award for significant impact on the field of biomedical informatics, and 2021 Distinguished Fellow designation by the American College of Medical Informatics. Lastly, he is former Chair of the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine. His areas of expertise and interest include clinical decision support, and more generally, use of knowledge to enhance health and healthcare processes. He can be reached at greenes@asu.edu.

Charles Jaffe, MD, PhD is the Chief Executive Officer of Health Level 7 International (HL7). He completed his medical training at Johns Hopkins and Duke Universities and post-doctoral training at NIH and the Lombardi Cancer Center. He has served in various academic positions in the Departments of Medicine and Pathology, as well as in the School of Engineering. Prior to joining HL7, he was the Senior Global Strategist at Intel. Dr. Jaffe has been the contributing editor for several journals and has published on clinical management, informatics deployment, and healthcare policy. He has been a Fellow of ACMI for more than a decade, has led various educational programs, and has served as the chair of Clinical Information Systems for 6 years. His area of interests include interoperability and research informatics. He can be reached at cjaffe@hl7.org. 

Congratulations to Christopher Longhurst & Ming Tai-Seale for an HRSA award titled Digital Health for High Risk and Vulnerable Population. The grant proposed providing in-home monitoring kits aligned with patient health conditions to support a seamless transition to telehealth, improve chronic disease management through home sensors, and provide the best team-based care to high-risk and vulnerable patients while also preventing unnecessary hospital readmissions.

Congratulations to Rob El-Kareh who is serving as site PI for a recently awarded R18 from AHRQ for project SEDANS—Shared Decision Aid Navigator System. The project aims to facilitate efficient, evidence-based conversations between patients and providers about important clinical decisions (like whether to have an implanted defibrillator placed). This pilot will use user-centered design principles to create SMART on FHIR apps and connect with the EHR to help identify which decision-making aids are relevant for each patient and pre-populate them with patient-specific data.

• Congratulations to Lucila Ohno-Machado, MD, PhD — Faculty of the Year
• Congratulations to Mericar Domdom — Staff of the Year
• Congratulations to Aaron Boussina — Trainee of the Year

Matteo D’Antonio and Danny Perry completed the Anza Borrego Cuyamaca Ultramarathon! They ran 51.5 miles in 11 hours, 51 minutes, and 10 seconds. Brian Johnson (DBMI student) was their pacer for the last 15+ miles. They also ran with Melissa Gymrek (not DBMI, but still UCSD).

Congratulations to Niema Moshiri for making Forbes 30 under 30 — Healthcare! Prof. Niema Moshiri has made the Forbes 30 under 30 list in recognition of tools he developed for analyzing SARS-CoV-2 sequencing data. He is both a current faculty member in BISB as well as an alumnus of the BISB PhD program.

Please join us in welcoming our newest baby to the DBMI family — Maria Carolina Aquino Cruz, nicknamed Mina. Both Mina and mom Melissa Aquino are doing well.

Quorum-based model learning on a blockchain hierarchical clinical research network using smart contracts.

Kuo TT, Pham A.Int J Med Inform. 2023 Jan;169:104924. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2022.104924. Epub 2022 Nov 9.PMID: 36402113 Free article.

Defining Key Performance Indicators for the California COVID-19 Exposure Notification System (CA Notify).

Aronoff-Spencer E, Nebeker C, Wenzel AT, Nguyen K, Kunowski R, Zhu M, Adamos G, Goyal R, Mazrouee S, Reyes A, May N, Howard H, Longhurst CA, Malekinejad M.Public Health Rep. 2022 Nov-Dec;137(2_suppl):67S-75S. doi: 10.1177/00333549221129354. Epub 2022 Oct 31.

Automated Detection of Posterior Vitreous Detachment on OCT Using Computer Vision and Deep Learning Algorithms.

Li AL, Feng M, Wang Z, Baxter SL, Huang L, Arnett J, Bartsch DG, Kuo DE, Saseendrakumar BR, Guo J, Nudleman E.

Ophthalmol Sci. 2022 Nov 11;3(2):100254. doi: 10.1016/j.xops.2022.100254. eCollection 2023 Jun.

PMID: 36691594 Free PMC article.

Deep Dive into the Long Haul: Analysis of Symptom Clusters and Risk Factors for Post-Acute Sequelae of COVID-19 to Inform Clinical Care.

Goldhaber NH, Kohn JN, Ogan WS, Sitapati A, Longhurst CA, Wang A, Lee S, Hong S, Horton LE.

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Dec 15;19(24):16841. doi: 10.3390/ijerph192416841.

PMID: 36554723 Free PMC article.

Evaluation of Depression and Anxiety in a Diverse Population With Thyroid Eye Disease Using the Nationwide NIH All of Us Database.

Lee TC, Radha-Saseendrakumar B, Delavar A, Ye GY, Ting MA, Topilow NJ, Bass J, Korn BS, Kikkawa DO, Baxter SL, Liu CY.

Ophthalmic Plast Reconstr Surg. 2023 Jan 24. doi: 10.1097/IOP.0000000000002318. Online ahead of print.

PMID: 36727790

Optimizing the Implementation of Clinical Predictive Models to Minimize National Costs: Sepsis Case Study.

Rogers P, Boussina AE, Shashikumar SP, Wardi G, Longhurst CA, Nemati S.

J Med Internet Res. 2023 Feb 13;25:e43486. doi: 10.2196/43486.

PMID: 36780203

Department of Medicine Quarterly Meeting

Wednesday, February 22, 2023

MET- MedEd Lower Auditorium

Registration starts 4:00 p.m. / Program begins 4:30 p.m.  

Zoom option: https://uchealth.zoom.us/j/83290627845

Dr. Zea Borok will provide departmental updates. CEO Patty Maysent and Interim VC/Dean Steven Garfin will be joining us as part of their departmental listening tours. We will also be joined by Dr. Sean Evans to share the SOM new undergraduate medical education curriculum.

Kelee Training: Mental ‘spa’ day!

Saturday, February 25, 2023

In our CME-approved Kelee Medicine Workshop

This training is especially helpful to faculty and students and can reduce stress, anxiety, depression, and burnout. The practice is easy to do, 5 minutes twice per day, and students consistently report improved sleep and focus. Please contact: Nikki Walsh, nwalsh@thekelee.org for more information about our student discount.

Registration Information:

Registration Fee: $100

Reduced Fee for Health Students/Residents/Fellows: $20

Sign up at: https:/www.thekelee.org/kelee-medicine-workshop

Unsubscribe

This email was sent to nherbst@ucsd.edu.

To continue receiving our emails, add us to your address book.

9500 Gilman Drive | La Jolla, CA 92093 US

Copyright 2023 UCSD DBMI. All rights reserved.