MU Medicine BBME Upcoming Webinar

Dexter D'Costa, MBBS, MHA, CCDS
Dexter D'Costa, MBBS, MHA, CCDS

Date & Time: Tuesday, April 1, 12:00 PM CDT

Location: via Zoom (link coming soon)

Subject: "New Career Opportunities in Healthcare Informatics"

Join us for our webinar, "New Career Opportunities in Healthcare Informatics," where we'll explore the rapidly evolving field of health informatics and discuss the growing demand for skilled professionals who can transform healthcare through innovative data-driven solutions. Learn about exciting career paths and how specialized training can position you at the forefront of healthcare technology and patient care improvement.

Dexter D’Costa, MBBS, MHA, CCDS, is the Senior Director for Middle Revenue Cycle Product & Value Management at Optum Insight. He manages Optum’s CDI 3D product and has over 20 years of healthcare experience, including roles in clinical informatics, clinical documentation, and AI-powered technology. He has worked with several leading health systems and RCM vendor organizations. His expertise includes electronic medical records optimization, physician education, and CDI/coding data analytics.

Register for this Webinar Here!

MU Medicine BBME Featured Talk

Date & Time: Wednesday, April 2, 12:30 PM CDT

Location: 109 Strickland Hall

Subject: "Using Real World Data for Comparative Effectiveness Research - The PCORNet Experience"

James McClay, MD
James McClay, MD, MS

James McClay, MD, MS, is a Professor of Biomedical Informatics and the Chief Research informatics Officer in the School of Medicine at the Columbia campus of the University of Missouri. Dr. McClay received his MD degree from Wayne State University in 1984. He came to Missouri in 2022 from the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha where he was a professor of Emergency Medicine with Courtesy appointments in Departments of Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis, Medicine and Neurosciences. Dr. McClay's research focuses on the standardization and reuse of medical record data for quality improvement and research. Dr. McClay is a chair at HL7 and the PI for the Greater Plains Collaborative Clinical Data Research Network.

Research in Biomedical Informatics, Biostatistics and Medical Epidemiology includes clinical informatics, epidemiology and population health, health informatics and surveillance, biostatistics, medical informatics, medicine, enabling and improving efforts in translational precision medicine and basic science investigation.

Services & Consultation

Department research support features peer-reviewed sources including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS), the Missouri Foundation for Health (MFH), Department of Veteran Affairs, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and other federal, state, local, academic, and foundation partners.

Faculty members actively participate in institutional research activities collaborating with various University of Missouri units including the NextGen Precision Health initiative, MU Institute for Clinical and Translational Science, Ellis Fischel Cancer Center, the Bond Life Sciences Center, MU Institute for Data Science and Informatics, and the UMKC Center for Health Insights.

Graduate students study to obtain a master's degree, with certificates available to support specialized professional subject matter, engage in assistantships in research working with faculty in the department and centers. For additional information regarding MSHI (Informatics) programs, please contact the Director of Graduate Studies, Fares Alahdab, MD, MSc.

Research training opportunities for post-doctoral fellows, residents, medical students, and undergraduates at times may also be available; those interested should contact individual centers and faculty members. The diversity of biomedical informatics, biostatistics and medical epidemiology investigators generates significant funded research contributions to health and medicine in Missouri and beyond.

The department includes the following centers, cores, and labs:

Research Groups/Labs

Associated Centers/Organizations

Some Current Research Areas and Topics

  • Accountable healthcare systems
  • Bioinformatics
  • Biomedical Informatics
  • Biostatistics
  • Cancer genomics
  • Cancer research registry
  • Clinical informatics
  • Clinical research informatics
  • Consumer health informatics
  • Computational biology, whole-genome sequencing data
  • Diabetes translational research dissemination
  • Electronic medical records (EMR)
  • Electronic health records (EHR)
  • Health surveillance projects
  • Healthcare industry economics, finance, and policy
  • Informatics for healthcare
  • Medical informatics
  • Population-based cancer registry
  • Public health informatics
  • Pregnancy risk assessment monitoring system (PRAMS)
  • Translational BioInformatics