All these projects fall under the discipline of "Health Informatics," the study of information principles, practices and resources to advance health care, which combines information science, computer sciences, cognitive science and health science.

Now, thanks to a successful campaign undertaken by medical librarians and embraced by Dean Pascal J. Goldschmidt, M.D., and numerous University partners, the Miller School is formally establishing an informatics program, joining more than 100 other institutions across the United States and Canada that already have done so. The new Department of Health Informatics, which replaces the Department of Medical Library and Biomedical Communications, officially recognizes the breadth and scope of the informatics discipline already at the Miller School, and establishes an academic home for collaborators across the University, some of whom may want to seek a secondary appointment in health informatics.

"The University has many people with great achievements in health informatics, but no mechanism to bring them together for recognition and collaboration,'' said Mary Moore, Ph.D., chair of the department and executive director of the library. "They are all working in one field or another, but when others look at us and say, ‘What is UM doing in informatics?' it has been hard to tell that story.''

The campaign to convey that message began more than a year ago, when medical librarians concluded their work in health informatics and the work of many other University faculty and researchers deserved recognition. In requesting the name change, they developed the vision for a collaborative department that would welcome all University faculty and researchers working in health informatics under the same umbrella.

"When we bring together all the people who are working in health informatics for strategic planning they can meet people they didn't know before and they can solve problems together,'' Moore said.

The first strategic planning session for partners and supporters is slated for the fall.

Approved by the Faculty Senate and made official with President Donna E. Shalala's signature, the change does not affect the name of the library building, which remains the Louis Calder Memorial Library after its donor. Nor does it alter the library's mission to improve the health of the community by providing evidence-based, client-centered health services, discovering and disseminating health findings, and educating medical and health leaders.

But, Moore said, the rechristened department will make UM more competitive for grant funding, facilitate training opportunities and assure medical students that their school is state of the art. It also will help the public by establishing a community brain trust to explore best practices for using information technology for such vital goals as expanding access to health care while reducing the cost.

As such, Dean Goldschmidt was among the numerous enthusiastic supporters who urged the Senate to approve the change.

"It will foster teaching and research programs that are contemporary, attractive to students and needed for modern health care,'' the Dean wrote in a letter of support. "It will help us to be more competitive, as more and more funding has become available through the NIH for health informatics teaching and research programs. In addition it will provide an ‘academic home' for those working in the field of health informatics.''

Reflecting the collaborative/partnership potential behind the new name, dozens of other University faculty from multiple disciplines also avidly supported the change. They included Richard Bookman, Ph.D., vice provost for research; Mark O'Connell, M.D., senior associate dean for educational development; Nicholas Tsinoremas, Ph.D., director of the Center for Computational Science and professor of medicine; Kenneth W. Goodman, Ph.D., director of the University's Bioethics Program, and a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics; Mohamed Abdel-Mottaleb, Ph.D., professor and chair of electrical and computer engineering; and Roni Avissar, professor and dean of the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.

And though the change was intended to build an informatics home for the entire University, Moore said, it is no small matter that the new name also recognizes what medical librarians have been doing all along, as well as where they're headed.

"When we teach about evidence-based medicine, PubMed searching for clinical information, clinical decision support tools, how to mine concept clusters across multiple full-text articles, we're teaching health informatics,'' she said.

The change also reflects the department's ongoing implementation of the Integrated Advanced Information Management Systems (IAIMS). That initiative, which dates back to the 1980s, first expressed the future vision of medicine where every electronic resource and database that could support health care would be linked together. To that end, Moore said librarians have long been working toward this ideal comprehensive and convenient information management system and envision the day when bibliographic databases will be linked with electronic health records, prescribing and billing services, interactive video, imaging systems, viral repositories for research - virtually any medical information that can be connected.

"The Miller School is now engaged in a major transformation in how we capture and use biomedical and health-related information,'' Bookman said. "The convergence of UM's investments in the EPIC system, in bioinformatics, in supercomputing, and in skilled information sciences professionals, means that the pursuit of our missions will be accelerated by an increasing sophistication in how we use information. This seemingly small name change is a key piece of our being a 21st century academic medical center.''