SC Biomedical Informatics & Data Science for Health Impact (SC BIDS4Health)

The South Carolina Biomedical Informatics & Data Science for Health Impact (SC BIDS4Health) training program seeks to train informaticists and data scientists to address population-level variations in health outcomes, observed in SC as a model geographic region. Through engagement with local communities, this impact is achieved by mobilizing telehealth services and informatics to improve access, interoperability and enhanced health information exchange, resulting in improved healthcare quality and e-health innovations that benefit all SC communities. Given that chronic illnesses underlie variability in SC patient health outcomes, our curriculum is based on the application of the Wagner model of chronic illness care to address these outcomes through informatics to make chronic care more available and effective across the state. This model provides a framework to enhance health systems for those at risk of adverse health outcomes with informatics and data science driven approaches to enhance the health of those at risk through more effective, patient-centric healthcare. SC BIDS4Health builds on the existing joint Clemson University – Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) PhD program in Biomedical Data Science and Informatics, and includes faculty who are nationally and internationally recognized leaders in biomedical informatics, public health, computer science and engineering and multiple biomedical and health domains. We leverage many existing resources and partnerships to enable a curriculum that provides state-of-the-art training and makes a notable impact on SC communities including those that demonstrate a higher disease burden. Through these same partnerships we create pathways into our program from local institutions of higher education. We hypothesize that systematic training in SC BIDS4Health is achieved by (Aim 1) synthesizing new didactic curricula building on the foundations of Biomedical Informatics, Data Science, and Population Health to achieve understanding of how these concepts can be applied in a variety of local contexts to advance health and improve health outcomes for all population groups; (Aim 2) developing new immersive practical and research experiences in communities to allow for direct trainee interactions and measurable impactful research outcomes; (Aim 3) providing teaching experiences to pre-doctoral trainees and promoting students’ exposure to biomedical data science and informatics research and careers; and (Aim 4) developing a new postdoctoral training program in SC BIDS4Health. We further propose to (Aim 5) evaluate the careers and community impact of the SC BIDS4Health training program. The predoctoral program is 2 to 3 years, while the postdoctoral program is 1 year with possibility of renewal for another year. At full capacity the program will concurrently support 3 predoctoral and 2 postdoctoral trainees across Clemson and MUSC.