To address this mission, the Center is undertaking a wide range of activities described below:

-- Affiliation Group to Promote Collegiality: Affiliation with the Center is open to interested faculty, students, administrators, and staff throughout the university, the medical center, and other institutions in the metropolitan area. Affiliation status will create a true informatics community in Pittsburgh, leading to new and enhanced collaborative relationships.

Mailings were sent to all health sciences faculty at Pitt, as well as to targeted faculty in other parts of the university and throughout the city. As of October 10, 450 faculty, students and staff have affiliated. The number of affiliates continues to increase.

-- Information System Integration and Development: The Center is the formal home of the Pittsburgh IAIMS (Integrated Advanced Information Management Systems) program. IAIMS is an initiative of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) which unites institutions seeking to make biomedical information universally and readily accessible to support teaching, research, patient care, and administration. The NLM also offers grant support for these efforts. The Center is leading the development of a proposal to fund IAIMS activities at Pitt and UPMC. If this application is successful, it will support projects related to a medical entities dictionary, clinical decision support, medical multimedia, clinical education, and other key topics.

These efforts will be further enhanced by a very close relationship between the Center and the Information Services Division (ISD) which is responsible for UPMC's deployed information systems. The Center is represented on the UPMC's Information Technology Executive Committee. Two collaborative projects between the Center of the Information Services Division of UPMC are underway. One project is developing a Clinical Event Monitor for clinical decision support; the second is developing a pilot implementation of physician order entry.

-- Education of Professionals in Medical Informatics: The Center is the home of the University of Pittsburgh training program in medical informatics, which offers both academic programs leading to degrees as well as non-degree research fellowships. There are currently nine trainees in medical informatics, most of whom are supported by the training grant from the National Library of Medicine. The training program has a core faculty of 12 who do most of teaching and advising of students. An additional 50 individuals are identified as affiliated faculty. The training program offers five core informatics courses which are open to anyone in the university community. The Center also collaborates actively in the education of other information professionals; for example, by participating in a new initiative to train health science librarians.

-- Mini-grant Program: The Center will award a limited number of small grants each year. Supported projects will be those with potential to improve, through innovative application of information technology, the clinical and educational programs of the university and medical center. Projects with promise to lead to external funding will have high priority. Postdoctoral fellows employed by the Center serve as production staff for these mini-grants. This fall, 15 mini-grant proposals were submitted in response to a call mailed to all health sciences faculty. A seven-member review group selected two projects for funding. One of these projects will promote implementation of clinical guidelines for control of hypercholesterolemia; the other will develop Personal Digital Assistant technology for data entry in the emergency department.

-- Faculty Fellow Program: The Center will offer fellowship status to one or more Pitt/UPMC faculty members who wish to spend part of their time in residence in the Center while working on informatics projects related to patient care, education, research, or administration. Fellows will receive limited financial support to complete their projects. Dr. Larry Borland of the Department of Anesthesiology is the Center's faculty fellow for 1996-97.

-- Specialized Laboratories and Interest Groups: The Center will serve as an umbrella organization and home to specialized laboratories conducting research and development in focused aspects of informatics, and similarly, can house "special interest groups" as these develop spontaneously among the affiliates. The Center is establishing a Laboratory for Clinical Multimedia, under the direction of Dr. Henry Lowe, as its first specialized laboratory. An interest group for applications of information technology to health professions education will be formed under Dr. Larry Borland's leadership.

-- Consultation on Information System Design and/or Evaluation: Center personnel will serve as resources to the university and medical center for advice on methods of information system design and evaluation. This can include advice on grant proposal development. Consultations focused on specific issues will be provided free of charge. Affiliates of the Center will also be able to involve Center personnel and other affiliates in informal "brainstorm" sessions to sharpen their own ideas.

-- Seminars: The Center will sponsor an ongoing program of seminars offered by personnel at the university and medical center, as well as speakers from outside the immediate community. These activities will be open to the public. A monthly seminar series will begin in November.

-- Educational Programs for Students in the Health Professions: Biomedical informatics is increasingly an essential component of pre-professional curricula across the health sciences. The Center will participate actively in these curricula by offering individual sessions or, as appropriate, new required or elective courses directed at these topics. Center personnel will also participate in planning for how to integrate informatics into these curricula. An elective course for medical students will begin on a trial basis this spring. The Center is represented in planning activities for other educational programs that will be heavily dependent of information technology.

-- Continuing Education Programs: The Center will offer programs on informatics for continuing education of health professionals. This includes a "Basics of Informatics" series of public lectures for personnel at UPMC, to promote understanding of system design and integration. This series began on September 19 and is proving very popular. In areas where Pitt faculty and staff have special expertise, short courses for the national and international informatics communities will also be offered.

-- Information Access and Dissemination: The Center will maintain physically--and publish via the World Wide Web, as appropriate--a wide range of information resources, including:

- biosketches and "other support" of all affiliated faculty, to facilitate grant preparation;

- information about upcoming events--local, national, and international--in informatics;

- a library of technical reports and documents produced other informatics groups (This "renegade literature" is very important, but documents can be difficult to locate.);

- a series of technical reports from the Center itself;

- a library of core informatics journals and a collection of reprints of relevant articles appearing in other journals.

-- Host Faculty on Sabbatical: Distinguished faculty members from other universities will be welcome to spend their sabbaticals in the Center. The Center leadership will facilitate integration of these sabbatical projects with research and development efforts ongoing at Pitt.

-- Locus of Grant Submissions: Proposals to support collaborative projects could be submitted through the Center. This could enhance the appeal of projects to potential funding agencies.

-- Fund Raising: The Center will be continuously in the process of fund raising to enhance support for the above activities. Center faculty and staff will also work in support of fund raising efforts conducted by affiliated faculty.