College of Public Health Grows; Adds Two New Divisions to Department of Biostatistics

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Aug. 25, 2010) − Two new divisions in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Kentucky College of Public Health have recently been created.  The Division of Biomedical Informatics and the Division of Cancer Biostatistics were created to meet the expanding campus biostatistical and biomedical informatics research and teaching needs. 

The Division of Biomedical informatics (BMI) is the interdisciplinary, scientific field that studies and pursues the effective uses of biomedical data, information and knowledge for scientific inquiry, problem solving and decision-making, motivated by efforts to improve human health. The Division is especially critical to the UK Center for Clinical and Translational Science, and will serve as the academic home for a multidisciplinary team of investigators, that will also guide academic degree programs in this rapidly evolving area. BMI builds on computing, communication and information sciences and technologies and their application in biomedicine. 

BMI can be viewed as a practical and applied discipline whose existence is intimately linked to current health care processes and whose intellectual products can have immediate benefit on healthcare and healthcare delivery. The new division will focus on the innovative uses of existing data and health information technology in supporting, public health, healthcare delivery and quality improvement activities while supporting research. 

"The new Division of Biomedical Informatics in the Department of Biostatistics in the College of Public Health represents the academic hub of BMI on the University of Kentucky campus," said Dr. Joseph Conigliaro, professor of Medicine and Health Services Management at the UK College of Medicine. The Division of Cancer Biostatistics will focus on cancer-related quantitative research. The Division will serve as the academic home of faculty that provides biostatistics leadership and expertise to UK’s Markey Cancer Center.  The primary goal of biostatisticians is three-fold: 1) conduct innovative research across a broad array of statistical science applicable to cancer-related research ranging from traditional and adaptively designed clinical trials; 2) analyze high-throughput microarray data; and 3) design and analyze methods for behavioral and epidemiologic population-based cancer research studies.

The critical goal that is served by these three roles of scholarship, collaboration, service and education is to enable cancer researchers to make appropriate and efficient inference and interpretation of their work that will ultimately enable a decrease in the cancer burden in Kentucky, the U.S., and throughout the world.

"We collaborate with cancer researchers by applying modern statistical methods in both the design and analysis to address issues and problems related to cancer," said Brent Shelton, Director of the new Division and a faculty member in the Markey Cancer Center.  "We also play a key role in disseminating this knowledge not only through publication but through the classroom in our role of training and educating graduate students; the next generation of biostatisticians.

For more information on the Department of Biostatistics, their faculty, research interests and academic degree programs, go to: http://www.mc.uky.edu/publichealth/deptofbiostatistics.html