Education:
- In March, a week into our 9-week intensive med school Host and Defense course, Paloma Cariello and I had to switch to online teaching because the campus closed due to COVID-19. Needless to say, we were disappointed not to be able to connect in person with our students. But we learned a lot about how to manage 125 students online. Our students were resilient and were very forgiving of the little things. I am grateful to the students who called into my office ours and buoyed my spirits. I am grateful to the faculty who did their best under the circumstances to provide the best education possible. Most of our faculty are involved in infectious disease, so the pandemic took a lot of their time. Our support staff did a great job of getting the material on YouTube. After the course ended – this photo ended up in my inbox. This means so much to me. This is why I teach.
- In DBMI, my Foundations of Bioinformatics course is going to be offered with an upper-level undergraduate option. This is quite exciting.
- We held a 2-hour virtual retreat on Education for DBMI. This is part of our continual improvement. We looked at the following issues –
- Academic Progress
- Behavior and Emotional Issues
- Mentoring Norms
We held breakout sessions, sending people to zoom rooms to discuss the different cases we had developed. It was a really successful experience.
Grants:- Simon Fisher and I submitted a renewal T32 proposal for Computational approaches to Diabetes and Metabolism Research to the NIDDK. I am so grateful to Bridgit Todd Hughes for keeping us on target during the lockdown.
- We put a proposal together for the AMA’s Accelerating Change in Medical Education Innovation Grant Program, titled: Better than Broccoli: Turning health system science education into a fun and healthy treat. This grant has been accepted and now the hard work begins. Damian Borbolla in BMI and I worked with Sara Lamb (Med School Curriculum). Health System Science contains a clinical informatics component for med students. This is a great way for our department to integrate more with our medical students throughout all four years. Damian and I are joint core educators in the med school bringing informatics expertise.
- My favorite conference of all time was postponed before COVID. The AMIA Educators Forum did not happen this year, and Anne Turner is leading the efforts to brainstorm how to bring it back. I miss this conference. I miss the workshops the most. One of the themes has been that the organizers bring in educators from the city that hosts the conference and there is a wonderful exchange of ideas. So that didn’t happen.
- Then I was signed up for IPHIE Master class in Seattle. That didn’t happen either.
- Bill Hersh and his team did manage to turn the NLM training conference into an online extravaganza. Three days of talks with me glued to the screen, reading the comments, and the tweets while listening to the students. It was the most intense multitasking I have ever done. Our students did a great job and the T15 cohort just shines.
- Watkins M, Eilbeck K. FHIR Lab Reports: using SMART on FHIR and CDS Hooks to
- Watkins M, Rynearson S, Henrie A, Eilbeck K. Implementing the VMC