University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center

From the Desk of the Director

This last issue of adobe medicus of 2006 features several new programs and services of the Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center.  Foremost are those that relate to the new Domenici Center for Health Sciences Education and the Phil and Olga Eaton Sculpture Garden of Healing that will serve as a green ribbon that ties together all the buildings of the Health Sciences Center.   

On January 3rd, HSC students and faculty will begin to use the new Domenici Center for Health Sciences Education.  Classes scheduled in the building for the Spring Semester were selected by a collaborative planning team that included the senior education deans of Medicine, Nursing, and Pharmacy.  The top priority for using the facility is for the HSC curriculum, but we hope soon to begin accepting reservations for other uses when space is not scheduled for classes.   

Tours and orientations for faculty teaching in the building this Spring are under way.   Public tours will be available the first three weeks in January, so that all faculty, staff and students will have an opportunity to explore the building.  Beginning January 3rd, greeters can be found throughout the new building to explain services and answer questions.

When the building opens, the HSC will have the following new areas that support students:  student lounge; auditorium(299 seats); classroom (48 seats); classroom/conference room (12 seats); small seminar/group study rooms (2 for students and 2 for faculty); and the UNM Medical Legal Bookstore (scheduled to open in the Domenici Center on December 20th).  The first exhibit of the Hall of Discovery will be a photo essay “Making a Difference” whose purpose is to set the context of the Health Sciences Center, and featuring 15 photos by Barry Staver, a well-known Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer.

An official dedication ceremony is being planned through the HSC Executive Vice President’s Office, and more information will follow on that event. 

The Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center will be responsible for managing the buildings, including support services and scheduling.   Until these support services are fully in place, questions can be directed to me, 272-0634.

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

TECHS Update

In early 2006 TECHS created a small but vibrant emerging technologies group whose focus was to identify, evaluate, and develop strategies for implementing emerging technologies that benefit Health Sciences Center faculty, students, and staff. The group defined ‘emerging technology’ broadly to include new information technology hardware or software and innovative new uses of existing IT.  To date, the emerging technologies group has played an active role in several projects including: the Advanced Media Initiative, the Windows® SharePoint pilot project and the Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Technology Adoption Program.

The UNM Advanced Media Initiative(AMI) was commissioned by the UNM Chief Information Officer to develop a campus-wide strategic plan guiding the deployment of advanced media technologies to support the University’s educational, research, and services missions.  Members from the emerging technologies group led AMI through a rigorous planning process and delivered the plan last spring.  It was well received by the community and has spawned several interesting video/web conferencing technology projects.

During the summer the group helped showcase Microsoft’s SharePoint collaboration tool as part of the UNM strategic planning process. SharePoint has several powerful document management features including version control and integrated task management.

Concurrent to the AMI and SharePoint projects, the emerging technology group helped UNM enroll in the highly selective Microsoft Windows Vista Technology Adoption Program Vista is the new version of the Windows operating system that is every bit as complex as it is powerful. Participation in this type of program helps TECHS prepare for the integration of new technologies into the campus computing environment.

Ongoing work includes providing cost effective recommendations for audio/video/web conferencing systems and selecting the next generation of Tablet PCs and smartphones for consideration as an HSC standard. The group is also investigating less glamorous, but strategically important, integrated project/operations management software collectively referred to as business intelligence systems.

Moving forward, the emerging technologies group is excited about its role in helping the campus get the most value from every IT dollar by ensuring that the right tools are ready for use with each new initiative.

Jon Tregear
Analyst Programmer 2
TECHS

HSLIC Faculty and Staff Support the HSC Clinical and Translational Science Center

The development of the new Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC) is an extraordinary opportunity for the UNM Health Sciences Center (HSC) to significantly increase its clinical research training capability. The CTSC will replace the HSC's General Clinical Research Center (GCRC), which was established 31 years ago and has produced many successful clinical investigators. The NIH is phasing out the GCRC in favor of the new CTSC program that is more extensive and has a broader scope than the GCRC model. The CTSC also includes a Master of Science in Clinical Research program for its trainees that promotes phase one translational research like the GCRC ("bench to bedside" research) as well as phase two translational research ("bedside to the community" research). In August, the HSC received a small planning grant to begin to create the M.S. in clinical research (a requirement for application for full CTSC funding). The full application for CTSC funding will be submitted in January 2008.

Several HSLIC faculty and staff are actively working in support of various activities for the new CTSC.  Philip Kroth, MD, MS, a HSLIC faculty member, is the director of the CTSC’s Biomedical Informatics Support Group (BMISG).  The BMISG will provide CTSC researchers and trainees with IT tools, infrastructure, and informatics expertise in support of their training and research activities.  A planning group that will determine the ultimate structure and function of the BMISG is currently conducting an environmental scan of existing HSC IT and informatics resources that could be leveraged to support CTSC training and research activities.  HSLIC faculty and staff participating in the BMISG Planning Group are Janis Teal, MLS, MAT, and Sally Bowler-Hill.

There are also 12 Education Core work groups tasked with creating various components of the CTSC’s M.S. curriculum.  The design of the curriculum is innovative in that it is being defined entirely using adult learning principles:  it specifies observable skills or competencies that students must demonstrate in order to satisfy curricular requirements.  One of the work groups, the Data Management and Biomedical Informatics work group, is charged with developing the biomedical informatics portion of the curriculum.  HSLIC faculty and staff who are members of this work group are Erinn Aspinall, MSI, Jon Eldredge, PhD, Kim Hagen, Phil Kroth, MD, MS, Deb LaPointe, PhD, and Holly Phillips, MLIS, MS.

Philip Kroth, MD
Assistant Director
Health Sciences Informatics Program
Development

5th Annual Scholarly Symposium

This year marked the 5th Annual Scholarly Communication Symposium for the UNM community.  The event was co-sponsored by HSLIC, University Libraries, and the Law Library and funded as part of the Regents Speaker Program.  The topic of the Symposium was Navigating the Currents of Scholarly Communication: Government Mandates for Public Access to Research.

Speakers L-R: Jean-Claude Guédon Ph.D, Christine Zuni-Cruz JD, Antoinette Sedillo Lopez JD, Holly Phillips MLIS MS, Erinn Aspinall MSI, Phil Kroth MD, Holly Buchanan EdD, Johannes Van Reenan MS

The keynote speaker was , PhD, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Montreal.  Guédon spoke on “Researchers and the Public Good: Why Mandating Open Access is Both Important and Fair.”  His talk reviewed the historical events leading to the current models of scholarly communication and the support of public access to publicly-funded research.  He stressed that as we look at emerging public access models, factors such as peer review, author visibility, and economic burden will have to be explored.

Guédon’s talk was followed by a presentation by Holly Phillips, MLIS, MS, Coordinator, Electronic Resources & Access at HSLIC.  Phillips spoke about the research that she and her colleagues Erinn Aspinall, MSI, and Philip Kroth, MD, MS, conducted on UNM author participation and attitudes regarding the NIH Enhanced Public Access Policy, which requests that NIH-funded researchers submit manuscripts resulting from their work to PubMed^® Central, the National Library of Medicine’s online archive of life sciences journals.

The Symposium concluded with a talk by Christine Zuni Cruz, JD, Professor, UNM School of Law.  She presented the online Tribal Law Journal which is dedicated to the internal law of indigenous peoples.  She spoke of the benefits of this model of publishing which include low publication costs, national and international recognition, and multimedia-enhanced content.

For more information about this Symposium and to view past symposia, see: http://hsc.unm.edu/library/sc/symposium.shtml.

Erinn Aspinall, MSI
Distance Services Coordinator

Biomedical Informatics Seminar Series Begins Its Third Year at HSLIC

2006 marks the third season for the Biomedical Informatics Seminar Series (BioMISS) at the Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center.  The BioMISS began in the fall of 2004 as a series of talks and small group discussions on various topics in biomedical informatics.  Topics have included everything from electronic medical records to medical simulation and from telehealth to the ethical issues surrounding the use of e-mail.  Speakers and discussion leaders have come from a wide spectrum of departments and business units at the HSC, UNM Main Campus, and beyond.

The 2006-2007 series began in September and there are still many more speakers with interesting topics scheduled for this season.  Jeremy Bockholt, Neuroinformatics Manager from the MIND Institute will be leading the next talk entitled “Neuroinformatics and the MIND Institute” on December 12th.  William Hlavacek, PhD, Technical Staff Member in Theoretical Biology and Biophysics Group of the Theoretical Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the UNM Department of Biology will deliver a talk entitled “Rule-Based Modeling of Biochemical Systems” on January 11th, 2007.   For a complete schedule of speakers and topics, download a BioMISS brochure at: http://hsc.unm.edu/library/informatics/MISS.shtml.

The BioMISS occurs approximately every second and fourth Thursday of each month from 8:30-9:30 AM in the Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center room 228.  The only prerequisite is an interest in biomedical informatics.  All are welcome to attend.

Philip Kroth, MD
Assistant Director
Health Sciences Informatics Program
Development

HSLIC Employees Meet $10,000 Target For Endowment for Geriatric Collection

For the 2006 United Way Campaign, HSLIC set a goal of increasing the fund for the Collection to Benefit the Elderly from $9,082 to $10,000, which is the minimum for creation of an endowment.  HSLIC faculty and staff were offered the opportunity to donate to this fund through the United Way or by other means.

Through payroll deductions and personal contributions, we have surpassed our goal!  As of December 2006, the fund will reach $10,172 and can be converted into an endowment that will produce annual interest revenue to expand the collection.

Congratulations and thank you to the HSLIC faculty and staff who helped us succeed!

Linda Easley
Executive Project Director