AMIA - Day 4

Well, the conference ended today. Unfortunately, my paper did not place in the student paper competition. Congratulations to the winners (placed First through Third)

1. Kensaku Kawamoto & David Lobach (Duke University), "Design, Implementation, Use, and Preliminary Evaluation of SEBASTIAN, a Standards-Based Web Service for Clinical Decision Support"
   



2. Nathan Hoot & Dominik Aronsky (Vanderbilt University), "Using Bayesian Networks to Predict Survival of Liver Transplant Patients"
   



3. Shayam Visweswaran & Greg Cooper (University of Pittsburgh), "Patient-Specific Models for Predicting the Outcomes of Patients with Community Acquired Pneumonia"
   

The up-side for me is that my competition talk went over well, generating good word-of-mouth, which resulted in a packed room (around 150 people) for my general conference talk. Upon discussion with various groups and researchers, it appears there is much interest in applying my models and ideas in various contexts. Very encouraging.

AMIA - Days 2 &3

Well, it's been quite exciting over here at AMIA. Many informative sessions. Of most interest, was the session on the National Centers for Biomedical Computing (at Utah, Stanford, Harvard, and UCLA). It appears after years of buildup, the convergence of bioinformatics and medical computing is approaching a dawn. Best of luck to these centers and I look forward to their research and developments.

I've had some great conversations with people from all over the world and have learned about fascinating problems that need formal privacy solutions. In that respect, my talk at the general conference yesterday went over great. It was a packed room, and it's clear that with HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules now in full swing, the community is beginning to sit up and take notice that technological approachs to privacy protection are not only interesting, but necessary.

Oh, the Regenstrief (Indiana University) continent (i.e. over 30 people) is a great group of people to interact with and - thanks for the dinner guys!

AMIA - Day 1

Woke up at 6am and grabbed some breakfast in the hotel before the student paper competition. A plain bagel and a 6oz orange juice - $5.50. Ouch. Gotta love DC hotels.

As for the the competiton - it was quite an experience. There were some excellent presentations on equally impressive pieces of research. Presentation order was randomized, and I ended up presenting last. Nothing like getting an audience right before lunch. :-) Anyway, the presentation went over well (from my perspective). Now, all of the competitors have to wait until Wednesday until the top three are annouced. Ah, waiting...

I ended up splitting my afternoon between a research paper session on biosurveillance and a panel on genomic data integration into clinical medical records. Very interesting. More to come sooon; however, I am exhausted, and I to eat some dinner. Be back later.

AMIA - Day 0

Alright, whoever set up the transportation routes between Washington-Dulles Airport and Washington, DC must have been kidding. The civil engineers probably said something along the lines of "Let's make people fly, then bus, then metro, to get into the city". It was meant to be a joke, until the city planners replied "Hey, that sounds like a great idea!", to which the engineers may have responded with "Wait, we were only... oh whatever, at least we'll get a good laugh."

As for myself, this morning I woke up to a cold, icky, rainy Pittsburgh and flew to a cold, icky, rainy (and very humid, but what else is new) Washington DC. After waiting for 30 minutes for my luggage, and another hour of transporting from plane --> bus --> metro --> transfer --> walk half a mile to the Hilton at Dupont Circle, I finally arrived at the Hilton Washington, home of the 2005 AMIA Annual Symposium. The consolation - I truly enjoy Dupont, and it's great seeing all of the wonderful boutiques and shops, especially Kramerbooks... ah memories.

Lucky for me, there's free wireless in the hotel, so my communication capability shall remain quite robust.

Anyway, upon checking into my room, I picked up my conference materials from the registration desk. Today's agenda for the conference consisted of a slew of tutorials and private meetings for which I was not able to attend. However, tomorrow is the competition and the official start to the conference - so there is an air of anticipation. And as always, this conference is huge! The hotel is just filled to the brim with AMIA attendees! Ok, be back tomorrow.

Present, Revise, Repeat

Presented my most recent theories on re-identification and linkability from my dissertation to the lab yesterday. The models held up pretty well and made for interesting discussion. Now I have to revise and represent next week. I see a cycle brewing . . .

When Nieces Attack...

Whew. Just returned from Jersey for Dana's (my niece) naming (Jewish ceremony where she received her hebrew name). Everything was absolutely beautiful: the ceremony; the reception my parents organized; my family; and especially the little wonder of honor!


Malin Family 

A bit of a whirlwind, considering sara and I drove in on Saturday morning and back late Sunday. Wish we could have spent more time, but the thesis beckons. As NSEWinHK says " One Question, Professor! When the hell are you getting out of there?! " - Soon. Soon. Soon. :-)

AMIA Studept Paper Competition Finals...

Well, it seems good news travels like wildfire (thanks to my doctoral advisor). To summarize: a paper I wrote, entitled "A Secure Protocol to Distribute Unlinkable Health Data", has been named one of the 8 finalists in the Student Paper Competition at the American Medical Informatics Association's Annual Symposium. The competition works as follows:

1. The paper must first be accepted to the conference by the Scientific Program Committee, then
   
2. a Student Paper Advisory Committee selected eight finalists (papers authored by students) for presentation at the competition.
   

Based on a combination of the written paper and oral presentation, the judges will assign 1st through 3rd place.

So now, I get to make two presentations: one at the competition (Oct 23) and one in my session (Oct 25) . Wish me luck!