MAY 10, 2019

Happenings: PaTH Welcomes the University of Michigan

The PCORnet site at the University of Michigan (U-M) is pleased to become a new member of PaTH. Previously a member of LHSNet, our site is both joining a new network and finding a new home within our own academic institution. With the beginning of 2019, our site transitioned from the Department of Learning Health Sciences into the Michigan Institute for Clinical & Health Research (MICHR) – the home of University of Michigan’s Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA). We felt that MICHR was a natural home for our PaTH site given MICHR’s role in supporting clinical and translational research to improve the lives of individuals and their communities.

Since its founding in 2006, MICHR has served as a centralized research hub for the university by offering education, training, consultation, and resources to promote clinical and translational research. A new unit within MICHR focuses on supporting the clinical and informatics needs of network-based research initiatives (e.g., Midwest Area Research Consortium for Health (MARCH), Trial Innovation Network (TIN)). Our new PaTH site resides within this MICHR unit.

The PaTH team at U-M is a multi-disciplinary collaboration across multiple units within the institution. Led by MICHR, our PaTH team also includes the research arm of Michigan Medicine’s Health Information Technology & Services (HITS) group, Michigan Medicine’s Data Office for Clinical and Translational Research (DOCTR), and the Clinical Trials Support Units. The PaTH team members are described below.

David A. Williams, PhD, is Professor of Anesthesiology, Medicine (Rheumatology), Psychiatry, and Psychology at U-M and serves as PI for the institution’s PaTH site. He also co-directs the Research Development Core and the Network-Based Research Unit within MICHR. He is both a clinician and a researcher, with publications in the areas of chronic illness management, e- and m-health service delivery, patient-reported outcomes instrument development and validation, and mechanisms of pain perception/modulation. He co-directs the institution’s Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center.

David Hanauer, MD, MS, is a clinical associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics with a joint appointment in the School of Information. He is a practicing pediatrician and serves as the director of MICHR’s informatics team, which leads the development and national dissemination of two software tools that target translational research: the U-M Health Research participant recruitment site and the Electronic Medical Record Search Engine (EMERSE) for free text notes. Dr. Hanauer’s academic interests include clinical and health informatics initiatives, primarily focused on the secondary use of clinical data and the interface between patients and the health care system.

Charles P. Friedman, PhD, is the chair of the Department of Learning Health Sciences and the Josiah Macy Jr. Professor of Medical Education at the U-M Medical School, as well as a professor of information and of public health. Prior to coming to U-M, he served as deputy national coordinator and chief scientific officer in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. Dr. Friedman was also associate vice chancellor for biomedical informatics and founding director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh.

Kanchan Lota, MPH, is administrative lead of MICHR’s Network-Based Research Program. In partnership with the team, Ms. Lota will design and implement the program to ensure that both the research and the patient community have a seamless and rewarding experience with PCORnet. Since joining MICHR in 2010, Ms. Lota has served in several capacities, including as administrative director of MICHR. Specific to PCORnet, Ms. Lota has over 15 years of experience in Community Engagement and Participant Recruitment, including providing guidance to partners and research teams that utilize community-engaged approaches, identifying potential collaborators, developing grant applications for research projects, and participant recruitment and enrollment.

Our work with PaTH is only possible through the hard work and deep knowledge of other key team members who deserve recognition, including: Jim Maszatics, administrative director of MICHR’s informatics team; Tricia Piechowski, administrative director of MICHR’s community engagement program; Sarah Maidlow, informatics business analyst with MICHR informatics; Jane Bugden, project manager at MICHR; Amanda Phelps, manager of MICHR’s clinical research management team; Joe Lipa and Siqing Hu, research integration analysts within HITS; Michelle Bochinski, a clinical data quality specialist with DOCTR; Don Liamini, a database administrator lead with DOCTR; and Marcy Harris, Lisa Ferguson, and Molly White, who were part of the U-M PCORnet team when they were in LHSNet.