Center for Biomedical Informatics Research & Innovation (CBIRI)

CBIRI intends to quickly link faculty to the biomedical informatics resources and expertise they need. The center aims to open doors for additional biomedical informatics research and discoveries; sharing and collaboration of personnel and resources across campuses and disciplines; and provide the support to compete for a new Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) grant. The center will allow strategic planning, improve communication and coordination and streamline collaboration opportunities for all types of activities related to biomedical informatics, including bioinformatics, clinical informatics and public health informatics.

Vision of the Center

CBIRI’s vision is to be recognized as a national leader in providing biomedical informatics (BMI) expertise and resources to promote and advance basic, clinical, translational, and public health research. Under the co-direction of Ann Fruhling, PhD, professor of Interdisciplinary Informatics within UNO's College of Information Science & Technology and Babu Guda, PhD, professor in the UNMC Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Anatomy CBIRI will be administered.

Mission of the Center

CBIRI’s mission is to serve as a coordination and communication vehicle for biomedical informatics (BMI) educational and research activities, and resources. Build new collaborations pertinent to both academia and industry by horizontal integration of expertise, resources, and users under one umbrella organization to facilitate effective utilization of BMI resources and expertise in the realms of all types of health research.

The term “biomedical informatics” is used differently in various settings. For the purpose of this Center and proposal, we define biomedical informatics (Refer Figure 1) as a collection of disciplines that include bioinformatics and systems biology (using biomolecular data), clinical and health informatics, and bioimaging informatics.

Figure 1 : Biomedical Informatics

Goals

• Strategically position the University of Nebraska to advance from a regional leader in biomedical informatics to a nationally recognized program by actively engaging faculty in developing and expanding unique expertise, growing faculty focused on biomedical informatics, and training students to accelerate biomedical discoveries.​
• Develop and disseminate training and outreach activities, such as seminars, vendor-sponsored workshops, mini-symposiums and short non-credit courses related to biomedical informatics to enable faculty and students to collaborate with BMI experts. ​
• Develop a platform for sharing personnel and resources across sub-disciplines and campuses, including the acquisition and distribution of BMI data analysis software by leveraging collective bargaining and group licensing.​
• Identify and develop research infrastructure that allows BMI to adapt to the rapidly changing needs of diverse disciplines.​
• Increase the number and variety of services, contracts, and grants that will sustain and grow the Center in the long term. In particular, the expertise and collaborations within CBIRI will be leveraged at UNO to compete for a new COBRE grant focused on the gut microbiome.​

Services

CBIRI provides a broad range of services through different cores. Refer to the services pages listed below corresponding to each core for more details.

• BioInformatics and BioMedical Informatics : Research IT Office
  
• BCL : Bioinformatics Computing Lab
  
• CAS : Electronics Health Records Access Core
  
• Clinical Informatics: Nebraska Biobank
  
• BSB Core : Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Core
  
• PHIR : Public Health Informatics Research Lab
  

Figure 2 : CBIRI Management Structure