[BiO BB] Call for Participation: NSF Biomedical Informatics Workshop, Dec.

Yan Zhang yanz at email.unc.edu
Mon Oct 22 18:38:49 EDT 2007


Call for Participation: NSF Biomedical Informatics Workshop, Dec. 4-5, 
2007, Portland, OR

We are seeking US-based participants for the upcoming NSF sponsored 
workshop on Biomedical Informatics. The core program of the workshop 
will feature speakers and panelists who have been invited to join the 
workshop. However, we reserved a few speaker and panel slots for 
accommodating participants who have not been invited but may qualify 
based on current research and interests.

All costs associated with the workshop event will be covered for most 
participants selected based on this CFP. If you currently have funding 
from a US Government Agency to conduct research on an area related to 
the main themes of the workshop, it is highly likely you will be 
selected to participate and you will be reimbursed for your cost from 
_our_ NSF workshop grant. You will be expected to conduct a panel 
presentation or a poster presentation at the workshop. Please contact 
Javed Mostafa (jm at unc.edu) if you are interested in participating. In 
your email to Javed, do include a paragraph describing your current 
research and / or point to current research materials, and describe any 
funded projects you are currently engaged in or recently completed. We 
will be able to respond to you with an answer fairly soon after we 
receive your interest statement.

Below we are providing a brief overview of the workshop. More 
information on the workshop can be found at the workshop website: 
http://biomedweb.info.

We are planning to explore research challenges and emerging solutions 
for handling health data from the point of origin (i.e., data
collection) to the presentation and manipulation stages. We are also 
interested in exploring a wide spectrum of health data ? starting at 
the genomics and cellular level, to the patients? level, and ultimately 
to the population level. Some specific topics that we will cover 
include:

* Data Acquisition: Capturing data, conversion to appropriate 
structures/formats, and natural language processing
* Data Standards: Limitations of current standards such as the HL7V3 
standard but also potential utility of emerging standards
* Semantic Interoperability: Vocabularies, ontologies, and techniques 
for semantic level sharing of data
* Data Management: Challenges associated with scale, heterogeneity, 
distributed, and fragmentary nature of data
* Data Presentation: Visual, adaptive, and optimal presentation of data 
for enhancing use and understanding
* Data Services: Emerging applications for supporting research, quality 
and safety management, public health studies, etc.

Beyond the areas above, we are also interested in the the following
topics: Cyberinfrastructures for health information delivery, 
social/economical/political barriers in expanding access to health 
information, and privacy/security issues in health information 
delivery. We are planning to have panels focusing on these topics at 
the workshop.

To encourage further research on improving health care information 
systems, NSF has provided funds to Indiana University and University of 
North Carolina at Chapel Hill to conduct this workshop. Our aim is to 
bring together experts from research, professional, and government 
sectors. The workshop will dedicate two days to individual and panel 
presentations and birds-of- feather events to identify and prioritize 
key challenges. Current NSF and NIH grantees, academics with 
substantial track records in the area, industry experts, and program 
officers in key US agencies have been invited to participate. The 
workshop will be held on December 4th and 5th, 2007, in Portland, OR.

Yan Zhang [Submitted on behalf of Dr. Javed Mostafa: jm at unc.edu]



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