Hindman Accepted Into BioMedical Informatics Fellowship Program
March 7, 2012
SPARTANBURG, SC – March 6, 2012 – Dr. Margaret Hindman, assistant professor of nursing and director of the Joint Center for Nursing Research and Scholarship at the University of South Carolina Upstate, has been accepted to the Fall 2012 BioMedical Informatics Fellowship program sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the National Library of Medicine.
Biomedical informatics focuses on the interface of computers and healthcare, or biomedicine.
This eight-day program in September, hosted by the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, is “designed to familiarize participants on the application of computer technologies and information science in biomedicine and health science through a combination of lectures and hands-on computer exercises.”
“Healthcare professionals have been using computers to collect information for years,” said Hindman. “But we are seeing an explosion in the use of technology with electronic health records, as well as new computer applications being used to monitor patients.”
The program will help identify the conceptual components of biomedical informatics, or telemedicine, by offering courses such as principles of database design, human-computer interfaces, and methods for measuring costs and benefits in health care systems. It will also address the technical components through courses such as use of the Internet for biomedical applications, current and emerging wide area network technologies, and systems for telemedicine.
Participants will also have an opportunity to share their own experiences and integrate the lessons being learned with applicable relevancy in being able to make making more informed decisions about computer-based tools for use in their own organizations.
“I realized that for me to make a contribution in this field, I needed more knowledge, a mentor and a better understanding of the current state of telemedicine research across the nation,” added Hindman. “This opportunity will expand my knowledge base in informatics and will provide mentorship for me to do further research which will benefit me professionally and, hopefully, have positive impact for the university and the community.
