For the ICTS, Valentine’s Day was all about the love of informatics.
On February 14, the ICTS hosted their third annual Symposium and Poster Session held at the Eric P. Newman Education Center on the campus of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The day-long event featured presentations, breakout discussions, and a poster session focused on the application of informatics tools and methods in a learning health care system.
The morning began with skills-focused workshops where participants could learn more about topics such as REDCap, MDClone synthetic data engine, and the secondary use of clinical data. Breakout sessions followed featuring how clinical research teams and informatics experts can work together. Participants chose from topics covering REDCap, Epic EHR custom content and research data brokerage services. A poster session wrapped up the morning agenda with posters showcasing the unique ways in which informatics tools advance research, academic training, clinical practice, and ultimately, patient health.
The symposium continued with an afternoon plenary session featuring opening remarks from William Powderly, MD, Director of the ICTS. Powderly highlighted many of the top ICTS accomplishments within the past year, including announcement of the newly redesigned ICTS website. Philip Payne, PhD, FACMI, Director of the Institute for Informatics, WUSM and Paul Schoening, MS, MBA, Associate Dean and Director, Bernard Becker Medical Library, WUSM, followed with introductions of keynote speaker Patricia Brennan, RN, PhD, Director, National Library of Medicine for her presentation on “Evolving from Precision Health to AI-Supported Care.” The day-long event wrapped up with a series of Ignite-style presentations by ICTS investigators covering topics relevant to informatics.
The ICTS extends a sincere thank you to all the speakers, attendees, faculty and staff who helped to make the Symposium a success. Special thanks to Symposium co-sponsors including: Institute for Informatics, Institute for Public Health at Washington University, Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (WUSM), and the Bernard Becker Medical Library.
Randi Foraker, PhD, Director, Center for Population Health Informatics, WUSM, speaks to participants during the MDClone Synthetic Data Engine skill session. 
Rachel Komeshak, Project Manager, Institute for Informatics, WUSM, moderates a breakout session on REDCap as it applies to clinical research. 
Albert Lai, PhD, FACMI, FAMIA, Deputy Director, Institute for Informatics,WUSM, speaks on the “Secondary Use of Clinical Data” in a morning skill session. 
Betsy Keath, PhD, ICTS Translational Research Program Officer, shares the latest resources from the Research Development Program with Sam Bozzette, MD, PhD, Consulting Medical Officer, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). 
Elvin Geng, MD, MPH, Director of the Center for Dissemination and Implementation, Institute for Public Health, WashU and Ana Baumann, PhD, Co-Director Dissemination and Implementation Research Core, WashU discuss her poster, “Translation and Validation of the Evidence-Based Practice Assessment Survey to Brazilian Portuguese: Challenges and Lesson Learned.” 
Opening remarks from William Powderly, MD, Director of the ICTS, highlight the top ten ICTS achievements of the year, including the newly redesigned ICTS website. 
Keynote presentation – “Evolving from Precision Health to AI-Supported Care” delivered by Patricia Brennan, RN, PhD, Director of the National Library of Medicine 
(From l to r) Dennis Barbour, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at WashU; Kelly Bowers, DO, Pathology Resident and PhD student in Bioinformatics at MU; and Andrea Fentem, MA, Project Manager of iCHASM Research Lab at WUSM answer questions from the audience following their Ignite-style presentations.