Dr. Murphy stands in front of the five semi-finalist posters at the i2b2 Symposium and $1000 Abstract Awards Ceremony.

On Thursday, March 1, CCTS CoDirector and Director of UAB Informatics Institute Dr. James J. Cimino announced the winners of the Inaugural i2b2 Abstract Awards Contest at a ceremony that showcased the five semi-finalist posters. To qualify, contest participants were required to use the i2b2 tool to query clinical data in UAB’s electronic health record and produce findings that could form the basis of a new avenue of research.

Abdullah M. Alanazi, MSc, RRT-NPS and Eric W. Ford, PhD, MPH, received first place for their study on “Substance Abuse and Smoking Choices: A Comparison between Electronic-Cigarette Users and Tobacco Smokers.” There were also two second place abstracts: “Having Allergies May Be a Risk Factor for Chronic Pain Conditions,” by Robert E. Sorge, PhD, and “Assessment of Diabetes and Hypertension in Adults with Spinal Cord Injuries,” by Yumi Kim, MS, and Tapan Shirish Mehta, MS.

Dr. Murphy’s lessons learned provide a glimpse into how he sees precision medicine shaping the future of research and clinical practice. (click to enlarge)

Shawn Murphy, MD PhD, one of i2b2’s inventors from Partners Healthcare, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School, attended the symposium and awards ceremony and provided an overview of the historic effort to build a translational research tool for accessing de-identified clinical data. He described several ways i2b2 can be used to support “high throughput translational research.”

Murphy complimented UAB on having “one of the best installations for what i2b2 was originally conceived to be—to get the data that was locked into health care into the hands of researchers (not data analysts) so they could get ideas for hypotheses, like in the posters here today.” Not all of the i2b2 installations across the country offer such a query tool, he noted.

First-place poster in the i2b2 Abstract Contest. (click to enlarge)At the end of his talk, Murphy encouraged the large group of attendees to take advantage of UAB’s i2b2 tool and “make a discovery of your own!” Cimino noted “i2b2 offers researchers a self-service solution to information needs that can be significantly faster than requesting data from Enterprise Data Warehouse analysts. It has a drag and drop interface, you don’t need to worry about breaking the system. And who knows, you might just win $1000!”

CCTS offers a hands-on i2b2 training several times a month. To learn more about the types of data available, visit the Research Data section of our website.

One of two second-place posters in i2b2 Abstract Contest. (click to enlarge)Join us in congratulating all of the Inaugural i2b2 Abstract Contest participants! In case you missed it, Dr. Murphy’s talk is available on our CCTS YouTube channel.

Want to learn more about using i2b2 to access clinical data for translational research? Mark your calendar for our next CCTS Monthly Forum on Wed., April 4, when we will hear from several UAB investigators who have made impactful research discoveries using i2b2.

One of two second-place posters in i2b2 Abstract Contest. (click to enlarge)

Dr. James Cimino stands with 1st place abstract authors Dr. Eric W. Ford and Mr. Abdullah M. Alanazi.

Dr. James Cimino stands with 2nd place abstract author Yumi Kim (her coauthor Tapan Shirish Mehta is not pictured).