WORKING GROUPS

TEXAS HEALTH INFORMATICS ALLIANCE (THIA)

THIA MISSION STATEMENT

To collaborate on improving health informatics and health care and meet Texas’ current and future
health informatics needs.

HOW?
We build informatics ties across Texas by bringing together researchers, developers, health
professionals, information management professionals, data and information scientists, students, and
anyone interested in health informatics to collaborate, communicate, and network in the following
areas:

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DATA

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POLICY AND STANDARDS

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RESEARCH

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EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

Join a Working Group!

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DATA

DATA WORKING GROUP

Data Working Group Mission Statement

To explore and make recommendations on all aspects of health data pertaining to data acquisition, sharing, interoperability, and storage to facilitate best practices for researchers, developers, practicing health professionals, information management professionals, and data and information scientists to improve healthcare quality and safety.

CHAIR

Lorrie Burkhalter, MPH, CCRC

Population Science Research Program Manager
O’Donnell School of Public Health
UT Southwestern

Lorrie Burkhalter is currently a Research Program manager for the Department of Population and Data Sciences at the University Of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. She has 18 years for research experience, starting as a coordinator in Emergency Medicine, currently managing a team of 19 research staff. Lorrie’s research experience covers projects from PI initiated observational studies, sponsored drug and device trials, NIH trials and quality assurance. She is an experienced research system and operations developer. She is currently a member of the UTSW IRB 1 board.Lorrie’s interests are in the development and operationalization of research systems, with a focus on the intersection of data, interoperability, and patient care innovation. She enjoys creating systems that support the process of research development from idea to publication.

MEMBERS

Noorullah Akhtar, MD, MBI, FAAP

Chief Medical Information Officer
Driscoll Children’s Hospital

Latasha Davis, BSN, RN

Transition Nurse Coordinator ACHD
UT Southwestern

Matthew Faatz

Business Intelligence Developer
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

Mikyoung Angela Lee, PhD, RN

Texas Woman’s University

Susan McBride, PhD, RN-BC, CPHIMS, FAAN

Associate Dean of Research
The University of Texas at Tyler

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Twitter

Amy Wagler, PhD, Statistics; MS, Statistics; BS, Mathematics,

Professor
The University of Texas at El Paso

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POLICY AND STANDARDS

POLICY AND STANDARDS WORKING GROUP

Policy Working Group Mission Statement

To advise THIA on policy development and advocacy for health informatics that supports the Texas healthcare environment.

CHAIR

Katherine Lusk, MHSM, RHIA, FAHIMA

Texas Health Services Authority

Katherine Lusk, MHSM, RHIA, FAHIMA is the Vice President Strategic Partnerships for the Texas Health Services Authority with a focus on cross-industry facilitation of trusted data exchange that supports innovation and data mobility. She has long championed interoperability serving in multiple local, regional and national roles.

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MEMBERS

Susan R. Bradshaw, MS, MBA, RHIA

Baylor Scott & White Health

Susan Fenton, PHD, ACHIP, FAMIA

The University of Health Houston School of Biomedical Informatics

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Bradley Grant, MD, JD

The University of Texas at Arlington

Jason Gillman, MD

Prism Health North Texas

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John C Kilburn, Jr., Ph.D. Sociology – Louisiana State University

Associate Vice President for Research Professor of Sociology
Texas A&M International University

Karen Knecht, MSN, RN

Clinical Advisor
StressPal, Inc.

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Ila Singh, MD, PhD

Chief, Laboratory Medicine
Chief, Pathology Informatics
Texas Children’s Hospital
Professor, Baylor College of Medicine
Founder, TRUU-Lab

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RESEARCH

RESEARCH WORKING GROUP

Research Working Group Mission Statement

Provide mechanisms and resources to facilitate collaborative interprofessional informatics research for health knowledge discovery and health care innovation to improve health outcomes and health equity in Texas communities

CHAIR

Mikyoung Angela Lee, PhD, RN

The Texas Woman’s University

Dr. Lee’s research focuses on designing, building, and testing the health information technology (HIT) capacity for nursing data acquisition, nursing effectiveness measurement, big data analytics, information exchange, and consumer health informatics. She has developed an automated extraction software, using natural language processing, to transform nursing narratives into quantifiable nursing interventions and outcomes data into standardized nursing terminologies. She developed and tested a mobile app for handoff communication to enhance nurses’ and nursing students’ clinical judgment competency and nursing handoff practice. She has worked on big data nursing science projects with national research working groups and database building and analytics with an interdisciplinary informatics research team. Her research of consumer health informatics focuses on the enhancement of laypersons’ knowledge/skills of health promotion management and the expansion of nurses’ roles through survey study, website evaluation, and web mining. She is also developing teaching pedagogies to improve the informatics competencies of nursing students.

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Faculty Profile

MEMBERS

Lorrie Burkhalter, MPH, CCRC

Population Science Research Program Manager
O’Donnell School of Public Health

UT Southwestern

Ling Chu, MD

UT Southwestern

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Latasha Davis, BSN, RN

Transition Nurse Coordinator ACHD
UT Southwestern

Prerna Dua, PhD

Professor and Program Director
Louisiana Tech University

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Yaser EiNakieb, Ph.D, BioEngineering

Data Scientist III
UTSW Medical Center

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John C Kilburn, Jr., Ph.D. Sociology – Louisiana State University

Associate Vice President for Research
Professor of Sociology
Texas A&M International University

Morgan Foreman, PhD Candidate, BS

Research Scientist
IBM Research

Zhaoli Liu, PhD, APRN

The University of Texas at Arlington

Dr. Laurie C. Long, PhD

The Texas Health Resources

Susan McBride, PhD, RN-BC, CPHIMS, FAAN

Associate Dean of Research
The University of Texas at Tyler

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Twitter

Lisa M. Sheid, MD

Assistant Professor
UT Southwestern

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EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT WORKING GROUP

Workforce Development Working Group Mission Statement

To collaborate on identifying and supporting workforce development initiatives that maximize the power of innovation and partnership by bringing together workforce development stakeholders.

CHAIR

Mari Tietze, PhD, RN-BC, FHIMSS, FAAN

The University of Texas at Arlington

Dr. Mari Tietze is the recipient of the Myrna R. Pickard Endowed Professorship at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) College of Nursing and Health Innovation (CONHI). In that role, she is the Affiliate, representing nursing, to the UTA Multi-Interprofessional Center for Health Informatics (MICHI), a collaboration among numerous health informaticists. She is also the director of the graduate certificate and master’s in nursing (MSN) Health Informatics at UTA CONHI. Dr. Tietze was co-investigator in two Texas-wide multi-method studies to examine over 1,000 nurses’ experiences using their electronic health records (EHRs). She is co-author of the three-time AJN Book of the Year, Nursing Informatics for the Advanced Practice Nurse: Patient Safety, Quality, Outcomes, and Interprofessionalism.