Spreading the word on informatics

Tom Casavant

What’s Bill Decker talking about? Campaign advertising? Those CDs that arrive unbidden in the mail offering free Internet service? Starbucks?

No, Decker, associate vice president for research, is referring to informatics, which takes methods developed by computer and information science and applies them in areas like the health sciences and engineering and in often-unexpected areas like the arts and humanities.

"People are always asking me, ‘But haven’t we been doing that for years?’ " Decker says. But informatics doesn’t just refer to keeping a class list on a computer or communicating with students via e-mail.

"It’s much more than just pressing buttons and running a machine," Decker says. "Even if we never used a computer, we would still be concerned about the intertwining of computing methods and other disciplines. Informatics is about finding the computational issues that lie at the heart of the problems in health science, in biology, in geography, and in other areas."

The term "informatics" came to the United States from Europe, where it refers to computer science. In the United States, the term is usually associated with the notion of integrating computer science into some other disciplinary area.

	Bill Decker

"The old paradigm of data and information is one focused on text and words," says Connie Delaney, associate professor of nursing. "Informatics is about not only text but other forms of data and information such as images, sound, and video. Informatics is about discovering new models for using and analyzing information."

At The University of Iowa, informatics is not new. In nursing, library science, the geosciences, engineering, and other areas, UI faculty and staff have been working with informatics for years. But a committee that began meeting in September is making an effort to formalize the discussion and to look toward the future.

The committee, composed of faculty and staff from a range of disciplines and headed up by Decker and Les Sims, interim vice provost, was formed under the direction of the Offices of the Provost and the Vice President for Research.

"Many people believe that taking a close look at informatics is not a choice—we must do it in order to position ourselves to succeed," Decker says.

"An informatics initiative is so crucial to this university," says committee member Connie Delaney. "There’s not a department or college that remains untouched by informatics."

And it’s bringing departments and colleges together.

"Informatics is definitely blurring the boundaries of disciplines," says Tom Casavant, professor of electrical and computer engineering.

Connie Delaney

His work with medical scientists who are mapping the human genome is a perfect example.

"It’s like they’re working on a jigsaw puzzle, and they have a billion pieces," Casavant says. "But only three percent of those pieces make up the picture—the other 97 percent are largely distraction."

Casavant and his engineering colleagues have developed a database for coping with these massive quantities of data and for creating new models based on that information. As a result, he’s learned a tremendous amount about genetics, and his genetics collaborators have learned about the capabilities of computers.

"You have to get up to your waist in the other person’s discipline," Casavant says. "The most interesting thing is asking the right questions, and you have to speak enough of the same language for that to work."

To that end, Casavant and other informatics committee members have been devising a curriculum model to produce informatics-savvy students in multiple disciplines. It’s just one of the ways the committee is formulating the future of informatics at the University.

"Informatics fits well with the University’s strategic planning emphasis on interdisciplinary work," Decker says. "We’re exploring how to create some type of long-term stimulation for this kind of work and ways of helping people find one another. We’re also looking at the relationship of these issues to our constituency base and to the activities that are occurring at the state level—informatics and workforce development and the skill development that will be necessary for people engaged in virtually all fields of work."

The committee also is considering ways to strengthen the University’s existing informatics programs and to create new initiatives in other areas at little or no cost.

According to Delaney, the College of Nursing is already using informatics in many of its research programs. These programs have attacked such issues as the development of vocabularies for patient problems, nursing interventions, and outcomes; the design of systems that better document patient care; identifying efficient and effective treatments by applying new data mining techniques to very large clinical data sets; providing decision support for the care provider; and testing the effectiveness of technology-supported, internationally delivered courses.

On a national level, according to Decker, one indication of the interest in exploring informatics is the funding of grants by organizations such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Education Association, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

"I’m seeing informatics-related activity all over campus," Decker says. "Alison Ford in theatre arts is doing virtual set design, and Loyce Arthur is exploring information-based costume design. In the Department of Religion, where professor emeritus George Nickelsburg has spent years studying the Dead Sea Scrolls, informatics could conceivably enable images of the scroll fragments to be reassembled and analyzed.

"The committee is the first step in positioning ourselves for the future, of building on our natural strengths, and creating strong interrelationships that will enable this brave new world of interdisciplinary work," he says.

Article by Linzee Kull McCray