Health, Medical, and Bio-Informatics

Collecting and analyzing biological, medical, and health information

Researchers Working in this Area

Related Research Projects

Assessing the Impact of Media Polarization on Public Health Emergencies

Time frame
2020-Present
Investigator
Jodi Schneider
Total funding to date
$10,000.00
Funding agency
Cline Center for Advanced Social Research

Media plays a big role in how citizens evaluate public health emergencies. This project seeks to understand how public health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the opioid crisis are reported. In order to assess the polarization and politicization of U.S. news coverage, we are comparing news by political leaning (left, center, right) as segmented by AllSides media bias ratings. We…

newspaper words

Augmenting Health Self-Regulation across the Cancer Survivorship Continuum by Digital Phenotyping

Time frame
2022-Present
Investigator
Jessie Chin
Total funding to date
$30,000.00
Funding agency
Campus Research Board

Breast cancer (BC) is a chronic illness. BC survivors often deal with the lifelong needs of self-management, such as controlling the symptoms, taking diet or nutrition plans, or adopting a physical activity program across their cancer survivorship continuum. Our team is eager to develop a novel technique to predict the intentions of lifestyle behavior by tracking ones' information behavior and…

head with questions

Automated Indexing for Publication Types and Study Design

Time frame
2023-2026
Investigators
Neil Smalheiser, Jodi Schneider, Halil Kilicoglu
Total funding to date
$947,925.00
Funding agency
National Institutes of Health

This project aims improve upon a tool clinicians, researchers, and systematic reviewers use to retrieve biomedical articles from bibliographic databases. Associate Professors Halil Kilicoglu and Jodi Schneider will work with Affiliate Professor Neil Smalheiser, professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois Chicago, on the project, which has received funding from the National Institutes…

doctor typing on a laptop

Building a Motivational-Interviewing Conversational Agent (MintBot) for Promoting COVID-19 Vaccination among People with Multiple Sclerosis

Time frame
2021-2022
Investigator
Jessie Chin
Total funding to date
$74,992.00
Funding agency
Jump ARCHES

Individuals with multiple sclerosis are likely to be hesitant to get the COVID-19 vaccine due to their compromised health condition. This project aims to develop an accessible, generalizable and efficient digital health solution for promoting COVID-19 vaccination among vulnerable populations, such as people with disabilities.

MintBot

CAREER: Using Network Analysis to Assess Confidence in Research Synthesis

Time frame
2021-2026
Investigator
Jodi Schneider
Total funding to date
$599,963.00
Funding agency
National Science Foundation

Policy in areas such as conservation, energy, healthcare, and sustainable development is informed by a variety of factors, including the best available science. Determining the best available science requires synthesizing multiple scientific results to gauge both the level of scientific consensus and the reliability of the research. However, on some policy-relevant topics, syntheses continue…

network of dots

Collaborative Research: Accelerating Synthetic Biology Discovery & Exploration through Knowledge Integration

Time frame
2019-Present
Investigator
J. Stephen Downie
Total funding to date
$211,699.00
Funding agency
National Science Foundation

The scientific challenge for this project is to accelerate discovery and exploration of the synthetic biology design space. In particular, many parts used in synthetic biology come from or are initially tested in a simple bacteria, E. coli, but many potential applications in energy, agriculture, materials, and health require either different bacteria or higher level organisms (yeast for…

synthetic biology

COMBINI (connecting Complementary Medicine and Biological kNowledge to support Integrative Health)

Time frame
2024-2029
Investigator
Halil Kilicoglu
Total funding to date
$3,261,972.00
Funding agency
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, National Institutes of Health

COMBINI (connecting Complementary Medicine and Biological kNowledge to support Integrative Health) is a collaboration between the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, the University of Minnesota, and Mayo Clinic in Florida. Illinois serves as the primary site.

The goal of the project is to develop informatics resources and scientific…

health medical project

Computational Methods, Resources, and Tools to Assess Transparency and Rigor of Randomized Clinical Trials

Time frame
2022-2025
Investigator
Halil Kilicoglu
Total funding to date
$1,328,502.00
Funding agency
National Institutes of Health

Randomized clinical trials are valuable in determining the effectiveness of health treatments. But problems with design, execution or reporting of the trial process can lead to unreliable findings, excessive costs, and, potentially, harm for patients. Associate Professor Halil Kilicoglu is leading a  team of computer/information scientists and clinical research methodologists in…

medicine

Developing Tools for Implementation of Illinois Project for Local Assessment of Needs (IPLAN) for Local Health Departments

Time frame
2017-2019
Investigator
Ian Brooks
Total funding to date
$75,000.00
Funding agency
Illinois Department of Health

This project works with the Illinois Department of Public Health to develop an information system that will enable local health departments and other stakeholders in Illinois to use and analyze data currently being disseminated by IDPH. This data will be used to develop health indicators, such as maternal and infant health, non-communicable diseases, drug overdoses, healthcare access, and…

IDPH Web Portal

Development of a Chatbot for Delivering Long-Term Motivational Interviewing for Improving Exercise Adherence in Hemodialysis Patients

Time frame
2022-Present
Investigator
Jessie Chin
Total funding to date
$75,000.00
Funding agency
Jump ARCHES

There are approximately 600,000 individuals in the U.S. with kidney failure undergoing maintenance hemodialysis (HD) therapy. HD patients have several co-morbidities, including muscle wasting, cardiovascular disease, and bone disorders, with very high medical costs, averaging ~ $93,000/patient/year. Lifestyle interventions such as exercise and nutritional modification are often prescribed to…

medical chatbot

Identifying False HPV-Vaccine Information and Modeling Its Impact on Risk Perceptions

Time frame
2020-Present
Investigator
Jessie Chin
Total funding to date
$389,810.00
Funding agency
National Institutes of Health

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the U.S., with over 34,000 new HPV-related cancers diagnosed annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An HPV vaccine, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2006, is recommended as part of routine vaccinations for school-aged children. However, the vaccine's…

network

Identifying Potential Bias in Science Using Citation Network Structures

Time frame
2020-2022
Investigator
Jodi Schneider
Total funding to date
$29,960.00
Funding agency
Campus Research Board

Biased citation benefits authors in the short-term by bolstering grants and papers, making them more easily accepted. However, it can have severe negative consequences for scientific inquiry. The need for a bias detection tool is evident from previous studies on citation bias, but existing work lacks crucial elements needed to scale the underlying approaches. This project will test the…

abstract science concept

Improving Patient Outcomes by Listening to Their Social Media Communications

Time frame
2017-2019
Investigator
Ian Brooks
Total funding to date
$15,000.00
Funding agency
Homecare Education Advocacy & Resource Team Support

It is difficult to understand the effectiveness of various treatment options when a huge number of external factors such as lifestyle, diet, and environment affect the burden of a disease. A major barrier to understanding is the challenge of scale—sampling enough patients to separate the major, minor, and negligible factors. With access to a database of more than one trillion public social…

social media icons

Improving results and conclusions about harms in systematic reviews of drugs

Time frame
2024-2029
Investigator
Halil Kilicoglu
Total funding to date
$1,918,852.00
Funding agency
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

This project is a collaboration with University of North Carolina (main site) and University of Colorado. Halil Kilicoglu serves as a co-PI and the lead at the University of Illinois. 

Systematic reviews are used to develop clinical guidelines, to set research priorities, and to help patients and clinicians make healthcare decisions. Systematic reviews of drugs should identify harms…

assortment of pills

INDICATOR: An Information System for Monitoring the Health of a Community

Time frame
2007-2011
Investigator
Ian Brooks
Total funding to date
$300,723.00
Funding agency
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Carle Foundation

INDICATOR is a novel information system for collecting, integrating, and analyzing data from multiple sources to provide public health decision makers real-time data on the health of their community. Data comes from sources as varied as emergency department visits, school attendance, veterinary clinics, and social media postings and together have been used to change public policy in outbreak…

INDICATOR

Natural Language Processing to Assess and Improve Citation Integrity in Biomedical Publications

Time frame
2022-Present
Investigators
Halil Kilicoglu, Jodi Schneider
Total funding to date
$300,000.00
Funding agency
Office of Research Integrity, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

This project will assist researchers and journals in evaluating citation behavior in biomedical publications. While citations play a fundamental role in the diffusion of scientific knowledge and assessment of research on a topic, they are often inaccurate (e.g., citation of nonexistent findings, inappropriate interpretation). This inaccuracy undermines the integrity of scientific literature…

journals spines

Pathtracker: A smartphone-based system for mobile infectious disease detection and epidemiology

Time frame
2015-Present
Investigator
Ian Brooks
Total funding to date
$1,005,692.00
Funding agency
National Science Foundation

This project will develop a mobile sensor technology for performing detection and identification of viral and bacterial pathogens. By means of a smartphone-based detection instrument, the results are shared with a cloud-based data management service that will enable physicians to rapidly visualize the geographical and temporal spread of infectious disease. When deployed by a community of…

Rapid Prototyping of Semantic Enhancements to Biodiversity Informatics Platforms

Time frame
2014-2018
Investigator
Michael Twidale
Total funding to date
$421,200.00
Funding agency
National Science Foundation

Taxonomists are scientists who describe the world’s biodiversity. These descriptions of millions of species allow scientists to do many different kinds of research, including basic biology, environmental science, climate research, agriculture, and medicine. The problem is that describing any one species is not easy. The language used by taxonomists to describe their data is complex, and…

RareXplain: A Computational Framework for Explainable Rare Category Analysis

Time frame
2021-2025
Investigator
Jingrui He
Total funding to date
$500,000.00
Funding agency
National Science Foundation

This project will focus on real-world problems where underrepresented, rare (abnormal) examples play critical roles, such as defective silicon wafers resulting from a new semiconductor manufacturing process and rare but severe complications (e.g., kidney failure) among diabetes patients.

"This problem of explainable rare category analysis was motivated by my collaboration with IBM…

circuits

Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science: Shaping a Research and Implementation Agenda

Time frame
2020-2022
Investigator
Jodi Schneider
Total funding to date
$174,981.00
Funding agency
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

When retracted papers are cited both before and after retraction, the scientific publication network inadvertently propagates potentially faked data, fundamental errors, and unreproducible results. Schneider's project will bring together a variety of stakeholders, including funders, editors, peer reviewers, authors, and publishers for interviews and a workshop. In addition to investigating the…

retracted science

Strengthening Public Libraries’ Information Literacy Services Through an Understanding of Knowledge Brokers’ Assessment of Technical and Scientific Information

Time frame
2021-2025
Investigator
Jodi Schneider
Total funding to date
$416,760.00
Funding agency
Institute of Museum and Library Services

Scientific and technical information is often translated for the public, by knowledge brokers such as journalists, Wikipedia editors, activists, and public librarians. This project will research how knowledge brokers assess the quality of scientific and technical information and the implications for public access, information literacy, and understanding of science. The project will use case…

Golden Gate bridge

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