Advances in information technology are becoming increasingly critical to disease treatment and administrative efficiency at healthcare facilities. Given the national debate over costs in the healthcare system, medical practitioners and IT experts say that the evolving field of biomedical informatics can provide large scale improvements in treatment processes, and ultimately, in the price tag for care. Biomedical informatics is a multi-disciplinary field, involving the collection, management, analysis, and integration of data in biomedicine used for research and healthcare delivery. According to Dr. Joel H. Saltz, director of Emory University’s Center for Comprehensive Informatics, biomedical informatics enhances  medical research via technology by making it possible to collect, weed through, and analyze widespread data on patient treatments and outcomes.

The Human Genome Project, completed in 2003, officially introduced the world to the field. The U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health spearheaded the 13-year international effort to map and identify the many genes in the human genome and placed that information into databases for medical use. But Dr. Saltz notes that biomedical informatics can be applied to any subset of medical research, giving clinicians access to “rich” or large pools of patient data and applying technological solutions and mathematical modeling to the process. Dr. Saltz also serves as chief medical information officer at Emory Healthcare and as a professor in the departments of pathology, biostatistics and bioinformatics, and mathematics and computer science at Emory University.

Propelled by the market potential and a variety of funding and tech initiatives from the National Institutes of Health, IT companies, university research centers, and government agencies are devoting considerable resources to new biomedical informatics programs. The Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) also is working to advance biomedical research for healthcare research universities, hospitals and other institutions through data sharing and online collaboration, as well as by providing infrastructure, software tools, strategies and advisory services. BIRN is a national initiative funded by the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), a component of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Emory University is stepping up its own efforts through its Center for Comprehensive Informatics. Dr. Saltz notes that the overarching goal of the Emory Center for Comprehensive Informatics is to foster collaboration between scientific and software systems researchers. However, the synthesis of medical information from disparate and numerous sources remains a key research effort at the Center and for other institutions and companies in the biomedical informatics field.

The Emory Center for Comprehensive Informatics was recently selected as one of five centers for “in silico” research on brain tumors, supporting the National Cancer Institute’s Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology. (The National Cancer Institute is part of the National Institutes of Health.) By tapping into the National Cancer Institute’s resources and other publicly available sources of patient medical information, the application of data analysis allows for “integrative medical research” into brain tumors, says Dr. Saltz. Emory will receive up to $2.2 million in funding over a three-year period.

The National Cancer Institute is spearheading an information initiative on cancer care, outcomes and research, specifically through their caBIG® (cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid) program. The caBIG® provides collaborative web-based data analysis, aggregation and data mining tools for clinician researchers across the country to share medical research results, health outcomes, and patient care information.

According to Dr. Saltz, “Biomedical informatics provides a way to look at a broad population, aggregating and effectively mining the clinical information.” Now, with the White House push and additional stimulus spending for electronic medical records at healthcare facilities, Dr. Saltz believes that the possibility of tapping into this massive pool of information may eventually facilitate the new frontier of biomedical informatics.

But the need for standardization of computer protocols remains a big stumbling block for the field of biomedical informatics, says Dr. Saltz. Barbara A. Maaskant, chief information officer for Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, does agree that syncing up computer protocols will be a major hurdle to cross in the field of biomedical informatics. Maaskant also serves as senior lecturer in information systems and operations management at Goizueta.

While Maaskant does see startup medical IT companies and established tech firms flocking to the field, the issue of security of personal patient health data also looms large. “Any time patient health information is concerned, there is great trepidation over whether or not one’s privacy can be protected,” she says. Navigating and making it possible to adequately secure this information across multi-institutional settings remains a critical challenge to the industry. Additionally, technology professionals and clinician researchers face a roadblock in the field due to the large data storage and computing power demands, she says. “Data compression and reliability will also test the industry.”

Plus, in a new and growing arena, the many “competing interests”, whether they are public or private, need to find some sort of common ground, notes Maaskant. This process will require the inevitable shakeout of players, the growth of dominant forces in the industry, and a need to move beyond individual silos of information. Despite the obstacles, the benefits of establishing repositories of medical research will keep driving the needed and inevitable changes in biomedical informatics, she says. Maaskant notes, “The technology is certainly here to stay. As it evolves, it will be interesting to see how it will change the face of healthcare.”

Maaskant adds that the academic standards and rigor at Emory uniquely positions the Center for Comprehensive Informatics to tackle many of the challenges facing this burgeoning new field.