The University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix hosted a lecture on Wednesday night on clinical informatics, which is how data and information technology are used to improve the medical field.
The interactive public lecture entitled “Clinical Informatics Eras: From Stone Tablets to Tablet Computing” is part of the university’s ongoing Mini-Medical School lecture series.
The lecture was presented and moderated by Dr. Howard Silverman, a professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at the university. The event was open and directed toward engaging the community at large.
Silverman used infographics, pictures and modeled examples to help explain the complex details of biomedical informatics and technology. The event also had interactive aspects to engage with the community.
These included question and answer sessions as well as group exercises, including discussions among community members with guided help from university medical students.
The first exercise had the audience putting themselves in the shoes of a new doctor in 1907 and trying to make a system based on ledgers more efficient. Suggestions included alphabetizing, color coding, and more in-depth labeling systems.
Silverman pointed out the real-world example of Dr. Henry Plummer, who designed a numeric registration system for medical records.
Silverman said he hoped the audience gained a sense of the current and future state of clinical informatics through the evening’s interactive elements.
“Interaction is much better for the learner,” he said. “It’s much harder on the lecturer, but much more fun seeing people learning right before your eyes.”
Brittney Fulop, a high school student who wants to go into the medical field, said she liked talking to her table group and engaging with the information presented.
“I liked the interaction,” she said. “It was a nice balance between the lecture and information.”
The Mini-Medical School lectures provide takeaways for the assisting university medical students too, according to one University of Arizona medical student, Puneet Raman.
“For us, it’s a chance to learn and become even more familiar with the things we already learn in the classroom,” he said. “It’s really nice to interact with the community and be really active and see them learn about medicine.”
The final exercise drew the most enthusiasm from the audience, which was told to consider what the future of clinical informatics will look like. Answers ranged from app ideas to health care identification numbers.
The next lecture will be held on Mar. 9 by Dr. Robert Roberts with his lecture Medicine: A Glimpse of the Future.
Contact the reporter at Kara.Carlson@asu.edu
