Biomedical Informatics Center

The Biomedical Informatics Center (BMIC) was established as a program in 2008 as part of research infrastructure development and investment by MUSC and Health Sciences South Carolina (HSSC). The BMIC includes a dedicated team of Informatics experts, software engineers and research support services under the leadership of Drs. Leslie Lenert and Jihad Obeid. The BMIC has shown tremendous growth in the past three years with current staffing of around 30 individuals that serve projects across the state of South Carolina. This team has an established track record and has been heavily immersed in the development and installation of several research infrastructural systems including the clinical data warehouse (CDW) projects both at MUSC and HSSC, i2b2, electronic consents, Palmetto Profiles, eIRB and several South Carolina Clinical and Translational Research (SCTR) Institute administrative systems.

We continue to recruit staff and Informatics faculty to support the ongoing research and educational mission. The team is co-located in a dedicated office building at MUSC and works collaboratively on all informatics projects. This collaborative development process allows sharing of best practices, expertise and reusable code.

Team members have now attended and presented work at several national meetings including CTSA, i2b2, The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) meetings and other informatics events. BMIC projects include: the statewide HSSC CDW with an i2b2 (Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside) data mart and workbench dedicated to translational research RPMS (described below); REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) a secure web application designed exclusively to support data capture for research studies; an eIRB system using Click Commerce collaborative software for research administration; several SCTR administration systems such as an interactive website, services and applications management, and research guidance tools; and Research Networking infrastructure Palmetto Profiles based on the Harvard Catalyst system. The BIP has diverse funding including an institutional commitment of funds from MUSC, funding from HSSC and funding from NIH through the SCTR.

The Biomedical Informatics Center provides investigators with ready access to a variety of software tools, databases, and support systems that will greatly facilitate the performance of clinical and translational research.

Effective utilization of information resources will increase as we expand and refine the data available to researchers within an integrated knowledge and data environment that maximizes the unique collaborative research portal. This integrated environment will permit researcher information and collaborative knowledge to be appropriately and creatively shared by many investigators.