The Clinical Informatics program within the University of Maryland School of Graduate Studies invites the public to its monthly conference sessions as part of the school’s Clinical Informatics Conference course.
The next free, virtual conference session takes place on Thursday, May 14, from noon until 2 p.m. The topic for the May session is Overarching Principles of Clinical Informatics. Attendees can join using Zoom.
At the conclusion of the session, attendees will be able to:
- Utilize common vocabulary to explain fundamental characteristics of the clinical informatics and the health system environments.
- Synthesize the elements of the prior conferences to understand the breadth of clinical informatics.
- Explore the depth of clinical informatics and its implications for all aspects of clinical medicine, research, and bioinformatics.
The speaker is Randa M. Perkins, MD, MBA, FAMIA, who serves as Dartmouth Health's chief health information officer (CHIO), overseeing clinical informatics for the health care system and serving as a practicing family medicine physician. In this and her prior CHIO roles, she leads clinical IT strategy, guides technical and design teams, and has previously built and led a clinical informatics fellowship program. She also serves as an associate professor in the department of community and family medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College.
Earlier in her career, Perkins practiced as a family medicine hospitalist at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare and taught at the Florida State University College of Medicine. Her contributions to health informatics have shaped the field at a national level. She serves on the Health Information Technology Advisory Committee advising the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT, contributes to national policy and research efforts, and contributes to the American Medical Informatics Association, where she has participated in panel discussions and has presented posters and manuscripts.
Perkins attended medical school at Florida State and earned a master of business administration degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She holds active board certifications in family medicine from the American Board of Family Medicine and clinical informatics from the American Board of Preventive Medicine. She regularly publishes papers in clinical informatics.
Readings for the first hour:
- Moore C, Valenti A, Robinson E, Perkins R. Using Log Data to Measure Provider EHR Activity at a Cancer Center during Rapid Telemedicine Deployment. Appl Clin Inform. 2021 May;12(3):629-636. doi: 10.1055/s-0041-1731679. Epub 2021 Jul 14. PMID: 34261172; PMCID: PMC8279818.
- Emamekhoo H, Riaz IB, Martin DB, Gabriel PE, Shah NJ, Bruckner L, Arafat W, Fu P, Freimuth RR, Liebovitz DM, Stillman RC, Stapp RT, Perkins RM, Sugalski J, Heinrichs T, Tevaarwerk AJ. Deriving wisdom from data: The value and continued rationale for structured data in the era of artificial intelligence-driven oncology care. Cancer. 2026 Feb 15;132(4):e70307. doi: 10.1002/cncr.70307. PMID: 41701629.
Readings for the second hour:
- Rotenstein LS, Melnick ER, Jeffery M, Zhang J, Sinsky CA, Gitomer R, Bates DW. Association of Primary Care Physicians' Electronic Inbox Activity Patterns with Patients' Likelihood to Recommend the Physician. J Gen Intern Med. 2024 Jan;39(1):150-152. doi: 10.1007/s11606-023-08417-8. Epub 2023 Sep 20. PMID: 37731135; PMCID: PMC10817856.
- Nguyen OT, Kunta AR, Katoju S, Gheytasvand S, Masoumi N, Tavasolian R, Alishahi Tabriz A, Hong YR, Hanna K, Perkins R, Parekh A, Turner K. Electronic Health Record Nudges and Health Care Quality and Outcomes in Primary Care: A Systematic Review. JAMA Netw Open. 2024 Sep 3;7(9):e2432760. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.32760. PMID: 39287947; PMCID: PMC11409160.
The INFO 610: Clinical Informatics Conference course is a monthly conference in biomedical and health informatics. Students are introduced to experts in the field of biomedical informatics, exposing them to key experimental and theoretical literature in the discipline, and encouraging discussion and further in-depth exploration of topics in clinical informatics.
The course emphasizes the application of informatics to the practice of medicine, to enhance health outcomes, improve patient care, and strengthen the clinician-patient relationship. The course expands on fundamental clinical informatics content, including clinical decision making, process improvement, health information systems, ethics, and management.
While attendees who are not enrolled in the course do not receive course credit, these conference sessions, which focus on biomedical and health informatics, are open to the public.