Biomedical Informatics (BMI)

The three credit UB Seminar is focused on a big idea or challenging issue to engage students with questions of significance in a field of study and, ultimately, to connect their studies with issues of consequence in the wider world. Essential to the UB Curriculum, the Seminar helps students with common learning outcomes focused on fundamental expectations for critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and oral communication, and learning at a university, all within topic focused subject matter. The Seminars provide students with an early connection to UB faculty and the undergraduate experience at a comprehensive, research university. This course is equivalent to any 199 offered in any subject. This course is a controlled enrollment (impacted) course. Students who have previously attempted the course and received a grade of F or R may not be able to repeat the course during the fall or spring semester.

This course will introduce UB undergraduate students to the core theories, concepts, applications, and research being conducted in the field of biomedical informatics. The course provides an overview of the broad and diverse discipline. BMI 401 will explore the role and use of data in today's healthcare environment. Messaging, terminologies, and interoperability standards, with attention to taxonomies and biomedical ontologies, a unique strength at UB, also will be covered. The course will survey current information management practices in both the U.S. healthcare system, and the biomedical research enterprise to support an understanding of the collection, use, management and oversight of biomedical and health data. Local experience with attacks on data security, and threats to protected health information will serve as real world learning opportunities. BMI subspecialties such as clinical informatics, bioinformatics and translational research informatics, ontology, dental, public, population and consumer health informatics, sociotechnical and human-centered design informatics will be included in the course. Students will be exposed to and learn from UB's outstanding team of research scientists and technical experts. The course concludes with a brief overview of the leadership and change management issues confronting health care systems and organizations today. Processes such as system needs analysis, strategic and financial planning, implementation and governance models, evaluation methods, such as workflow analysis and usability engineering, and the effective management of interdisciplinary project teams, also will be covered.

BMI 402 builds further upon the general overview of biomedical informatics and its various sub-disciplines as introduced in BMI 401. It offers students a deeper insight in the most relevant theories and practical applications in the field. The first half of the course will review theoretical aspects, principles and techniques that do justice to the relationships between biomedical data and what these data are about. The second half will consist of investigating the extent to which these principles are applied in various biomedical informatics applications and what the consequences are if they are violated. The course will terminate with the various career options open to biomedical informaticists and what requirements in skills and competencies they are associated with. Students will learn how to review, for example, scientific papers, system documentation, commercial white papers and case studies about biomedical informatics applications. They will develop skills in distinguishing science from pseudo-science and objective documentation from sales pitches, report on their findings and provide solid arguments for their conclusions. They will obtain a clear understanding of what is possible in biomedical informatics today, what reliably can be expected to emerge in the forthcoming years and how they can contribute towards these developments as future professionals.

Biomedical Informatics Senior Capstone is an upper-level seminar course intended for Biomedical Informatics majors with a Biomedical Informatics concentration and other qualified advanced undergraduates. This course will cover a selection of topics of current interest in the field of Biomedical Informatics, primarily through reading and discussion of the primary literature. It is intended as a capstone experience for Biomedical Informatics majors that will integrate topics and themes learned in the lower-division introductory courses and build on the topics covered in BMI 301 and BMI 402. Students will work in teams to complete a final course project that will combine the component areas of Biomedical Informatics (i.e. clinical informatics, biomedical ontology, public health informatics and bioinformatics) to address one or other health related concern prevalent amongst young adults.

Students collaborate with faculty research mentors on an ongoing project in a faculty member's laboratory or conduct independent research under the guidance of a faculty member. This experience provides students with an inquiry-based learning opportunity and engages them as active learners in a research setting. The prerequisite of this course is the permission of instructor. Anyone who can write programs/scripts and/or is comfortable with operating systems environments and utilizing computing tools available (or possesses the aptitude to learn quickly) can be successful in this course. Individual faculty will establish the knowledge and experience necessary prior to engaging in the research and creative activity projects specific to each student by conducting an in-person interview prior to registration.