University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center

From the Director

As a year ends, it is traditional to review milestones, blessings, and gifts. HSLIC has had many accomplishments during 2005 such as assisting the UNM “covered entity” with implementation of the HIPAA Security Regulations in April. Affirming UNM readiness allowed us the opportunity to do what we do best: plan, improve our information technology security processes, assure institutional standards awareness, and deliver training competency in HIPAA security. 

HSLIC blessings and gifts are focused on people and their contributions to HSLIC and the broader HSC community. In 2005, the HSC was fortunate to receive its second endowment, gifted by Larry J. and Nedra C. Gordon to establish an endowment focused on the continued development of HSLIC collections and initiatives in the area of environment health.  The end of 2005 and beginning of 2006 have brought many other changes including the retirement of Mary Lujan-Kerlee, Manager of Business Services, and the hiring of Marcia Sletten. Mary’s invaluable service of 21 years at UNM will be followed by Marcia’s expertise from HSC Financial Services. 

As 2006 begins, we look forward to continuing to deliver as much digital services and information possible amidst continued HSC development. We are eager to see the Domenici Center for Health Services Education rise from the ground. Newsletters in 2006 will focus on this new education building, as HSLIC has recently been tapped for stewardship of planning and leading its use by the HSC family. 

And finally, this issue focuses on HSLIC planning efforts, particularly those relating to our Knowledge Management and Information Technology initiatives partially funded by our IAIMS planning grant from the National Library of Medicine. I want to highlight the article on page 2, which will help us prepare for future initiatives including implementation of integrated systems as well as submission of future grant proposals.

Holly Shipp Buchanan, EdD
Associate Vice President for Knowledge Management & IT
Director, Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center
hbuchanan@salud.unm.edu

External Panel Reviews UNM IAIMS Programs

Eight reviewers from six universities across the country visited the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center (UNM HSC) on October 13th and 14th to evaluate UNM’s Integrated Advanced Information Management System (IAIMS) program and master plan. The purpose of the review was to assess UNM’s readiness to submit an IAIMS Operations Grant proposal to the National Library of Medicine.

The review panel included: Joan Ash, PhD, Oregon Health Sciences University; William Bria, MD, University of Michigan Health System; Rick Forsman, MLS, MPA, University of Colorado at Denver; Larry Hunter, PhD, University of Colorado at Denver; Bob Kvavik, PhD, University of Minnesota; Joyce A. Mitchell, PhD, FACMI, FACMG, University of Utah School of Medicine; Wayne Peay, MS, Director, University of Utah Health Science Center and Steven Wormsley, PhD, University of Arizona College of Medicine.

The National Library of Medicine offers IAIMS grants to support the integration of biomedical knowledge and databases at institution-wide or trans-institutional levels. The goal of the program is to provide assistance that facilitates a managed approach to the development and accessibility of clinical and scholarly information across and/or between organizations.

Proposals for IAIMS Operations Grants are evaluated on an institution’s demonstrated commitment to the IAIMS approach, including support for the proposed project. Projects must include a comprehensive evaluation plan and demonstrate long term value to the institution’s general mission and specific IAIMS goals.

The visiting reviewers critiqued information technology planning documents created by the HSC’s Knowledge Management and Information Technology (KMIT) councils as part of an IAIMS Planning Grant awarded in 2001 (Holly Buchanan, EdD, and Fred Hashimoto, MD, co-principal investigators). They met with HSC leadership to assess UNM’s commitment to IAIMS. They also toured the B.A.T.C.A.V.E. (HSC’s medical simulation center) and the School of Medicine’s new Division of Biocomputing as examples of signature informatics-related programs at the UNM HSC. HSLIC also hosted a poster session detailing the work that has been done as a result of the IAIMS Planning implementation.

Reviewers highlighted these signature programs, the UNM Center for Telehealth, and our close proximity to the national labs as strengths of the IAIMS effort at UNM. They were also impressed with how IAIMS planning has continued at UNM almost 3 years after its Planning Grant ended. Weak institutional level planning, non-unified IAIMS planning documents, a lack of integration between information technology plans and budgeting, and current high-level administrative vacancies were cited as the primary weaknesses of UNM’s IAIMS program.

For more information about the UNM HSC IAIMS program, visit http://hsc.unm.edu/library/kmit.

Sally Bowler-Hill
Information Systems Planner

The 4th Annual Symposium on Scholarly Communications was held November 1, 2005. The theme for this year’s Symposium was "The Digital Academy: Innovations in Scholarly Publishing".

Keynote speaker Ann Wolpert, MLS, the Director of Libraries for Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) gave a talk entitled "Institutional Repositories: An Innovative Solution for the Scholarly Community." Wolpert spoke extensively on DSpace (http://www.dspace.org/), a digital repository system jointly developed by MIT and Hewlett-Packard Labs to capture, store, preserve, and distribute digital research material. DSpace allows scholars, faculty, and students to publish their work online for public review. Wolpert explained that DSpace offered an alternative to publishing so that authors could own their work, share their research freely with the entire world and have it easily searchable.

Abby Smith, PhD, consultant for the Library of Congress’ National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) gave a talk "More Innovative Than We Think" in which she discussed how the advent of internet technology has changed communications between scholars. She explained that the virtual domain has created a much tighter-knit scholarly community among sub-specialties, where scholars were previously isolated as the only experts in their area within their institution. For this reason, Smith believes digital scholarship will become the norm and will encourage and facilitate collaborative work in the future.

The Symposium is sponsored annually by the Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs; Office of the Executive Vice President for the Health Sciences Center, University Libraries; the Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center; and the Law Library.

Catherine Brandenburg
Group Administrator

New UNM IT Cabinet

During 2005 the UNM Chief Information Officer (CIO) Bill Adkins led formation of the new UNM-wide IT Cabinet. The IT Cabinet was created as part of a new governance and planning infrastructure, under development since 2002, to support the growth of information technology (IT) across campus. The UNM CIO’s office, reporting directly to President Caldera, was created in Dec. 2004 with the identification of the following goals: develop an IT Governance and decision-making structure; develop an IT Strategic Plan; establish effective two-way multi-channel communication; and reorganize IT across campus.

Ron Margolis and Holly Buchanan were appointed by the Executive Vice President for Health Sciences to serve on the IT Cabinet (with alternates of Mike Campbell and Greg Gaillard, respectively). The Cabinet meets twice monthly. Work accomplished during 2005 includes: established email address standards for student email (only unm.edu or salud.unm.edu); endorsed a new campus wireless standard that will go into effect July 2006; and endorsed moving Corporate Time calendar users to GroupWise. Future work will include identifying campus-wide goals and strategies for the coming year. For more information, please contact Holly Buchanan, Ron Margolis, or Bill Adkins.

Holly Shipp Buchanan, EdD, AVP
Ron Margolis, CIO, UNMH