Biomedical Informatics
	Perry M. Miller, Ph.D. Professor of Anesthesiology and Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology Email: perry.miller@yale.edu Room: TMC 40 Ste 3D Phone: (203) 764-6715 Ph.D. M.I.T. 1973; M.D. University of Miami 1978

Prof. Perry Miller is Director of the Yale Center for Medical Informatics (YCMI) and of Yale's Biomedical Informatics research training program. Biomedical Informatics is a discipline at the intersection of biomedicine and the computing and information sciences. The field focuses on the creative application of computers in clinical medicine, biomedical research, and medical education. In clinical medicine, the growing use of computers in patient care, education, and research makes the field increasingly important. In biomedical research, informatics is rapidly becoming a critical component of virtually all bioscience fields.

Projects at the YCMI include major initiatives in clinical, neuro-, and genome informatics. In these projects, the YCMI collaborates with faculty and staff from many departments at Yale. Additional information is available at the YCMI web site (http://ycmi.med.yale.edu/).

Biomedical informatics research training

Since 1985, Dr. Miller has been Director of Yale’s Biomedical Informatics Research Training Program, supported in part by the National Library of Medicine. This program currently supports trainees working in clinical informatics, neuroinformatics, and genomic/proteomic informatics. Dr. Miller is also Co-Director of Yale’s recently inaugurated interdepartmental PhD program in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics.

Planning for a National Center of Biomedical Computing at Yale

Dr. Miller is the PI of a three year planning grant which aims for the establishment of a national center at Yale. Co-investigators in this project are faculty from MCD Biology, MB&B, Computer Science, Statistics, Biostatistics, and Genetics. With the theme of "Harnessing Advanced Computing Technologies for Biomedicine," the Center will provide a focus for highly collaborative research, training, and software dissemination involving many academic units and research support units within Yale University as a whole. There are four research themes: a) heterogeneous biomedical database design, b) multilevel approaches to facilitate interoperation among biological databases and software tools, c) integrative data mining for genomics and proteomics, and d) high performance distributed biocomputing.

Genomic and genetic informatics

Over the past 15 years, the YCMI has been involved in a number of projects involving genomics, and more recently proteomics. Current projects include 1) developing and maintaining a variety of databases that are used actively within the laboratory of Dr. Kenneth Kidd (Genetics), 2) working with Dr. Michael Snyder and others in the Yale Center of Excellence in Genomic Sciences (CEGS) and the Yale Center for Genomics and Proteomics to develop and refine databases for yeast and human gene expression data, and tools to help analyze that data, 3) working with several groups to develop the Yale Microarray Database to provide University-wide support for microarray experiments, and 4) working with Dr. Kenneth Williams of the Keck Biotechnology Center and the NHLBI Proteomics Center to develop databases and tools for proteomics data, including the analysis of mass spectrometer data.

Neuroinformatics

Dr. Miller directs the informatics components of a collaborative Program Project involving Drs. Gordon Shepherd (Neurobiology), Michael Hines (Computer Science), and Prakash Nadkarni (YCMI), supported as part of the national Human Brain Project. The project is developing informatics support for neuroscience research and computer-based neural simulation using the olfactory system as a model system.

Informatics in support of clinical research

Since 1996, the YCMI has had a major project to develop, refine, and use Trial/DB, a client-server, Web-accessible database designed to support clinical research projects. Trial/DB is currently being used for a growing number of clinical trials and clinical research projects at Yale. It is also supported by two cooperative grants to Dr. Prakash Nadkarni (Associate Professor, YCMI): a) to serve as the special studies database for the NCI’s multisite Cancer Genetics Network, and b) to help support the NIH’s multisite Pharmacogenetics Network.

High performance computing applications

For more than a decade, Dr. Miller has worked with Computer Science colleagues Martin Schultz, Nicholas Carriero, and others to apply high performance computation (HPC) techniques to problems in biomedicine, ranging from sequence analysis and molecular dynamics to cell image analysis. Current collaborations with bioscience researchers focus on developing a parallel main memory database system and a framework for rapid application development environment.

Clinical informatics activities

The YCMI is also involved in a number of collaborative clinical informatics activities. A longstanding research activity has involved the development of programs which bring computer-based advice to the practicing clinician. One current project directed by Dr. Richard Shiffman (Associate Director, YCMI) involves developing GEM (Guideline Elements Model), an XML-based standard to help organize the creation and use of clinical practice guidelines. Another recent clinical informatics project involved Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) which offer a lightweight, mobile platform that can be used at the point-of-care.

Recent Publications

Friedman CP, Altman RB, Kohane IS, McCormick KA, Miller PL, Ozbolt JG, Shortliffe EH, Stormo GD, Szczepaniak MC, Tuck D, Williamson J. Training the next generation of informaticians: the impact of "BISTI" and bioinformatics--a report from the America College of Medical Informatics. J Am Med Inform Assoc, 2004, 11:167-72.

Miller, P. L., Nadkarni, P., Singer, M.,Marenco, L., Hines, M., Shepherd, G. Neuroinformatics research at Yale in support of the Human Brain Project: SenseLab. J Am Med Inform Assoc, 2001, 8:34-48.

Miller, P.L. The opportunities at the intersection of bioinformatics and health informatics: A case study. J Am Med Inform Assoc, 2000, 7:431-438.

Shifman MA, Srivastava R, Brandt CA, Li TR,White K, Miller PL, Exploring portability of informatics capabilities from a clinical application to a bioscience application: A case study. J Am Med Informatics Assoc 2004. (in press)

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