Clinical Translational Science Institute - Biomedical Informatics Group (CTSI-BMI)

What is Biomedical Health Informatics (BMHI)?

An emerging, interdisciplinary, integrative and diverse field that:

  • Combines health sciences (e.g., medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy and allied health) with computer science, management, cognitive and decision sciences, social science, biostatistics, engineering and information technology
  • Solves problems in health care delivery, pharmaceutical, biomedical and health sciences research, health education and clinical/medical decision making
  • Has developed its own areas of emphasis and approaches that sets it apart from other professions and disciplines

Biomedical Health Informatics at the University of Minnesota

Biomedical Health Informatics (BMHI) is an overarching infrastructure supporting the breadth of biomedical informatics (BMI) initiatives and that will coordinate availability of these services, synchronize knowledge across groups, and provide education to grow BMI capabilities (2010, CTSA). 

The Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA) presents a vision to improve the health of Minnesotans. For more information, visit the CTSI website. The Biomedical Informatics (BMI) section of the CTSA grant fully describes how to support a coordinated, collaborative environment in basic and clinical translational research that fosters optimal discovery, sharing, and use of new knowledge. It may be useful to think of CTSI-BMI as the tools and applications needed to support researchers for the continuum of translational research.

The CTSI-MBI is responsible for supporting the breadth of biomedical informatics initiatives across the University of Minnesota, both within and beyond the colleges of the Academic Health Center (Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, School of Public Health, and Veterinary Medicine). In addition, BMI has a close and collaborative relationship with The University of Minnesota Interdisciplinary Informatics (UMII). BMHI directs the activities of three major entities:

  1. Institute for Health Informatics (IHI), the academic home of the University's biomedical health informatics, offering a comprehensive research and graduate program, including two master's degrees (Master of Health Informatics and MS in Health Informatics) and one PhD degree program (Doctor of Philosophy in Health Informatics). The University of Minnesota has offered informatics graduate degrees for fifty years, one of the longest-running universities to offer study, degrees, and research in this science.
     
  2. Academic Health Center's Information Exchange (AHC IE), a broad interdisciplinary effort that provides the structure and governance needed to support the CTSA-BMI vision and provide valuable health data for researchers.