Ann L. Fruhling, PhD

Ann Fruhling, Ph.D., MBA is a Charles W. and Margre H. Durham Distinguished Professor of Information Science and Technology and the founding Director of the School of Interdisciplinary Informatics at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. The School provides opportunities for collaboration with other disciplines through sharing curriculum and collaborative applied research. The three degrees offered by the School-- Information Assurance, Bioinformatics and IT Innovation-- all have two very important common characteristics. First, they each have interdisciplinary components in their curriculum. Second, they rely on working collaboratively with other disciplines and the community. One of the main goals of the School is to be an "IT solution finding" resource for our community partners in the areas of information assurance, healthcare, bioinformatics, public health informatics, business and government.

Dr. Fruhling's research focuses on evaluating and improving human - computer interaction efficiency and effectiveness. The overarching theme of her research is analyzing and solving information systems’ development problems that span the spectrum from efficient requirements elicitation processes, to best practices in user interface design and systems development methods (agile), to post-implementation evaluation of user acceptance. Her niche is at the cross section of public/clinical health informatics and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Dr.Fruhling's research aims to improve the ease of use, usefulness, efficiency, effectiveness, data visualization presentation and user satisfaction of IT user interfaces in the public health and clinical healthcare information systems and public health emergency management IT systems. HCI research focusing on health care systems is included in the AHIMA health informatics curriculum (ahima.org). In the Biomedical Informatics (BMI) and Health Informatics Translational continuum, her research concentrates on T3 and T4. (See Figure below).

Khoury et al. developed a translational research framework to illustrate the interconnectedness of research involving multiple phases (T0–T4), beginning with scientific discoveries (T0) and ending with population health impacts (T4) (Khoury et al., 2010). Lam et al. further enhanced the translational research framework by introducing four influential drivers (collaboration, technology, multilevel analysis and knowledge integration) that are thought to accelerate the translation of scientific discoveries into health care and population health benefits. The translational research framework presented in Figure depicts the continuum of the transfer of evidence-to-practice and the drivers that can accelerate translational epidemiology (Lam, Spitz, Schully, & Khoury, 2013).

Since 2002, she has been the Principal Investigator of an emergency response system and bioterrorism surveillance system for public health laboratories called STATPack™ which is deployed in over 40 health laboratories across the Midwest.She has received over $8,200,000 in research-related funding, with 99 funded research projects that have supported over 80 students and 2 full-time employees.

For fill list of publication deatils refer : Publications

Education

Ph D - Management Information Systems - Strategy, Marketing, Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction
University of Nebraska at Lincoln

MBA - Master in Business Administration
University of Nebaska at Omaha

BS - Computer Information Systems
Colorado State University