Tag Archives: Center for Health Insights

Medical students curate TEDxUMKC event

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Now in its fourth year, TEDxUMKC has been organized primarily by medical students.
Now in its fourth year, TEDxUMKC has been organized primarily by medical students.

Tickets are on sale for TEDxUMKC. Speakers at the event, to be held Dec. 5 at the National World War I Memorial and Museum, include Mark Hoffman, Ph.D., director of the UMKC Center for Health Insights, and Sly James, the mayor of Kansas City, Missouri.

TEDx events are offshoots of the TED conferences, which started in California 26 years ago.

UMKC medical students Rahul Maheshwari and Ryan Sieli are co-curators of this year’s event, themed “Big Challenges, Small Solutions.” Harika Nalluri, a sixth-year medical student, organized the first TEDxUMKC event in 2012.

In addition to Hoffman and James, speakers at the 2015 TEDxUMKC event include Reza Derakshani, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering at UMKC; Terri Friedline, Ph.D., assistant professor in the School of Social Welfare at the University of Kansas; and Dakota Rosenfelt, a UMKC pharmacy student, hemophilia advocate and entrepreneur.

In a press release, the organizers of the 2015 TEDxUMKC event explained why they chose the “Big Challenges, Small Solutions” theme:

Although our society has made much progress, there are still major challenges facing us today. Some of these challenges are well known, while many are not. However, there are those among us that recognize, react and resolve those problems. These pioneers, acting in the spirit of ingenuity and altruism, have paved a path to help make the world a better place. They bring awareness to unseen obstacles, and offer creative solutions to tackle them. Innovational in nature and quick in thinking, these individuals strive to expand our horizons by breaking the facade for others to follow and demonstrating that one individual can make a difference.

Tickets to TEDxUMKC cost $5 for UMKC students and $10 for the general public and usually sell out. Visit www.tedxumkc.com for more information.

Center for Health Insights director leads medical wearables challenge

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Mark Hoffman, Ph.D., is director of UMKC's Center for Health Insights.
Mark Hoffman, Ph.D., is director of UMKC’s Center for Health Insights.

Mark Hoffman, director of the University of Missouri-Kansas City Center for Health Insights, is a leader in the Wearables in Healthcare Pilot Challenge. Voting ends Saturday, March 28, and requires a short registration on Medstro, a social network for physicians, medical students, researchers and the interested public.

Winners of the seven initial awards are given the opportunity to pitch to Google’s Boston headquarters to win up to $10,000 to support the project. With less than a week remaining in the voting, Hoffman’s two entries — both emerging devices rather than inventions — were in the Top 5 of 89 entries and were leading their categories.

“For me, this is about more than prizes; it is about the opportunity to do some work at the leading edge and about broadening precision medicine and putting a very personal face, in this case some special children, on a technology initiative,” said Hoffman, who also is director of Translational Bioinformatics at Children’s Mercy.

Hoffman’s entries for wearables projects were inspired by the multiple health challenges facing the Szajnuk family, the three grandchildren of the choir director at Hoffman’s church. The three children struggle with pain, inability to cool down when they become warm and other symptoms. Hoffman’s #Research blog post includes more information.

Here are the voting site links to Hoffman’s entries:

Before joining UMKC in 2013, Hoffman spent 16 years leading genomics, public health and research initiatives at Cerner, where he was a vice president.

Center for Health Insights launches new web tool for research data management

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CHI logoThe School of Medicine’s Center for Health Insights (CHI) is pleased to announce the availability of REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) to enhance biomedical and health research initiatives at UMKC. REDCap is a secure web application for managing research, including observational studies, clinical trials and online surveys. The CHI and UMKC Information Technology Services implemented REDCap to provide a secure, centralized environment to document, store, manage and analyze research data. It is highly adaptable and can be customized by the research team for each project. Two pilot projects have successfully used REDCap, and it is now available to all UMKC faculty, students and staff who are participating in health and biomedical research. Attend a REDCap overview session to learn more. Two overview sessions will be held on May 14 and 20 at the School of Medicine in Theater C. Click here To register for one of these sessions and to learn more about training session options. (Use your UMKC SSO to sign in.) REDCap designer sessions begin in June. To learn more about the Center for Health Insights and REDCap, visit http://chi.umkc.edu or contact us at redcap@umkc.edu.REDCapPRN