Cancer Informatics Services (CIS)

Personnel

Faculty

Michael J. Becich, MD, PhD
Co-Director, Cancer Informatics Services
Chairman, Department of Biomedical Informatics
Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Pathology, Information Sciences and Telecommunications

Uma Chandran, PhD, MSIS
Co-Director of Cancer Informatics Services, UPCI
Director of Genomics Analysis Service, UPCI
Research Associate, Bioinformatics

Faculty Info

Dr. Becich is the Chairman of the University of Pittsburgh Department of Biomedical Informatics, and is also a Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Pathology, Information Sciences and Telecommunications. Dr. Becich obtained his MD and a PhD in Experimental Pathology from Northwestern University, and served as a staff anatomic pathologist for Washington University at St. Louis after completing his pathology residency. He is a surgical pathologist specializing in prostate cancer. At Pitt, he founded the nation’s first Pathology Informatics fellowship program and the Advancing Practice Instruction and Innovation through Informatics conference, now in it’s 13th year. Most recently, with the leadership of Bruce Friedman, MD, he helped co-found the Association for Pathology Informatics. His research interests are in cancer biology, pathology/oncology, and bio-informatics. His current research focuses on developing datawarehouses and data mining strategies for genomic and proteomic data derived from high throughput methodologies such as expression microarrays and tissue microarrays. His interests also include tissue bank information systems, clinical information systems, and imaging repositories that currently operate in the Pathology Department at University of Pittsburgh. His research activities are funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, Department of Defense, and the National Institute for Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Diseases, as well as multiple genomic/biotechnology company sponsored research programs. He is a member of 14 professional societies and has contributed to over 100 papers as well as several on-line presentations. He is also one of UPCI’s collaborators in the Gynecologic Disease Program, a multi-institutional effort to advance the detection and treatment of gynecologic disease.

Recent Publications

Grants

PA 00-111 (Raab)
12/01/2002 - 11/30/2007
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Improving Patient Safety by Examining Pathology Errors
A critical component of improving patient safety is reducing medical errors. A paucity of information exists on anatomic pathology diagnostic errors and their effect on patient outcomes. Many previously published studies are limited to single institutions and report variable diagnostic error percentages from less than 1 percent to 43 percent of all patients who undergo a biopsy or excisional procedure, with no correlation between error and outcome. A major goal of this project is to establish a Web-based, pathologist-driven, national, voluntary anatomic pathology error database. These data will be used for continuous quality improvement targeted at error reduction and clinical outcomes improvement.
Role: Co-PI

P30 CA47904 (Herberman) 08/01/2004 - 07/30/2009
National Cancer Institute
Cancer Informatics Service
The CIS at UPCI is composed of the following tightly integrated services: 1) Clinical Trials Management Application - supporting all of the clinical trials of UPCI. 2) Tissue Banking Information System - supporting pathologic annotation and inventory control of the biospecimen (tissue, blood, serum, and body fluids) requests of UPCI researchers. 3) Registry Research Information Services - supporting all of the clinical and outcomes annotation of patients in clinical trials and who contribute their cancer tissues to the tissue bank. 4) Honest Broker Services - an important new component for HIPAA compliant research information services. 5) Organ Specific Databases - a data mining tool for organ site specific programs that facilitates HIPAA compliant and de-identified access to patient tumor stage, grade, etc, as well as study cohort availability. 6) Storage, Archival, and Network Services - fulfill the needs of the UPCI for a robust network and storage solution for clinical trials, tissue banking, imaging, and genomic and proteomic data archiving which is actively maintained and backed up. UPCI will be increasingly reliant on developing robust research information services to more effectively support the translation of innovation from the laboratory to the bedside and to utilize critical clinical and outcomes data in the clinic to guide discovery at the bench.
Role: PI for University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute Cancer Center

79207CBS10 (Becich)
08/01/2004 - 02/28/2008
National Cancer Institute
Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG)
The specific aims of the UPCI caBIG are to develop open source software to support clinical, translational, and basic cancer research: Our role in caBIG is as developers in the Clinical Trials, Tissue Banks/Pathology Tools, Vocabularies/ Common Data Elements, and Architecture Workspaces. We will also be involved in strategic planning at all levels.
Role: PI

W81XWH-05-2-0005 (Herberman)
10/15/2004 - 08/31/2011
USAMRMC Prime Award, Walter Reed Army Medical Center - U Pitt Partnership Department of Defense
Gynecological Diseases Center (GDC)
The primary objective of the Gynecologic Disease Program is to develop state-of-the-art capability in clinical and basic science research aimed at improving screening, early detection, prevention, and treatment of gynecologic disease for the military health beneficiaries. Using microarray, proteomics analysis, and other laboratory technologies, the group will continue to identify molecular alterations associated with different gynecologic cancers and use this information with epidemiologic data to develop additional chemopreventive and therapeutic strategies. Innovative radiologic imaging, image-guided robotics, gene therapy, and invasive radiological techniques will be evaluated for diagnostic accuracy and clinical applications in patients with benign and malignant gynecologic tumors. With information gained from these research activities, we will continue to improve screening, early detection, prevention, and treatment of gynecologic disease.
Role: Co-PI

W81XWH-05-2-0066 (Becich)
7/1/05 - 9/30/08
USAMRAA Prime Award, TATRC/Department of Defense
Proteomics and Bioinformatics Core Facilities
The University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, the University of Pittsburgh Basic Genomic and Proteomics Facility, and the Windber Research Institute will collectively and collaboratively acquire additional proteomics technologies and work to produce optimized laboratory workflows and protocols to create the multi-institutional Proteomics and Bioinformatics Core Facilities that will serve the proteomics research and bioinformatics needs, and any of the clinical applications of proteomics assays for researchers and hospitals throughout the greater Western Pennsylvania region. The services of the Proteomics and Bioinformatics Core Facilities will be offered through a common web portal, and optimized protocols will be published as they are developed.
Role: PI

1 P01 CA109688-01A2 (Whiteside)
4/1/07 - 3/31/12
NCI
Immune Escape in Human Cancer: Mechanisms and Therapeutic Implications: Informatics Core
This Core proposes to provide information management and to integrate information to support the four projects and the other cores of the Immune Escape P01, and it is therefore is critical for completion of program goals. The Core provides exceptional services, which include information management for clinical trials, tissue banking and a registry of research results, as well as data mining and infrastructure to support data sharing and networking. The Core seeks to support translation of innovation from lab to bedside and utilization of clinical outcomes to guide discovery at the bench. The Core is part of a large and impressive informatics center with significant resources and experience. This system shares a common database with the tissue bank system. The Core offers significant technological innovations in the use of data mining, automated annotation of specimens, anonymization, and data brokering. There is an advanced architecture for ensuring security and protecting confidentiality.
Role: Core PI and Director.

1-U19-OH009077-01 (Becich)
9/1/06 - 8/31/08
CDC NIOSH
Mesothelioma Virtual Bank for Translational Research
The proposed Mesothelioma Virtual Bank (MVB) for Translational Research will create and maintain infrastructure to support a national virtual patient registry and tissue bank. MVB proposes to create and maintain a set of resources through a cooperative working group that will make available their independent stores of mesothelioma tissue for public access. MVB will use a centralized internet-based database or registry modeled after the virtual tissue bank registry created by the Pennsylvania Cancer Alliance Bioinformatics Consortium (PCABC, see http://pcabc.upmc.edu). The MVB registry will be used for data recording and collection related to each tissue sample (serum, tissue or DNA). Each participating institution will be responsible for the data entry and updates into the registry for each of their samples. The registry will be established and managed by the University of Pittsburgh team in collaboration with, and guidance from, the CDC and NIOSH via this cooperative agreement. Marketing and outreach efforts of the MVB will be accomplished by partnering with Translating Research Across Communities (TRAC). In addition to actively publicizing the availability of this resource to prospective users in the research community, TRAC will capitalize on its deep linkages to the Patient Advocacy Community to create a dialogue with this deeply vested population. Education and direct involvement of this Community will garner general as well as fiscal support for the MVB that will be necessary to sustain the tissue bank, informatics tools, and patient registry staff critical to the long term viability of this important program.
Role: PI

1 U54 RR023506-01 (Reis)
10/1/06 - 9/30/11
NCRR
Center for Clinical and Translational Informatics (CCTI) of the University of Pittsburgh Clinical and Translational Research Institute
The role the Center for Clinical and Translational Informatics (CCTI) merges three existing Centers (Biomedical, Oncology, and Pathology Informatics) and the GCRC Information Technology Core (ITC) into one new entity. CCTI will be housed in the new Department of Biomedical Informatics that Michael J. Becich, MD PhD (co-Director of CTSI and director of CCTI) will chair. This organizational restructuring is focused on better serving the clinical and translational informatics needs of the CTSI locally and the CTSA network nationally.
Goal: The goal of CCTI in the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) at the University of Pittsburgh is to utilize biomedical informatics to maximize efficient information management and ensure data integration at each step in the “lifecycle” of clinical and translational research projects. This will first be accomplished locally by developing open source tools to allow our extensive University-based research community to more effectively share and utilize research data. These tools will then be connected via grid computing and shared with other Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) sites nationally. This transformation will be tightly coupled to a comprehensive plan for educating researchers about the utility and value of these tools throughout the lifecycle of clinical and translational research.
Role: Co-director of CTSI and PI for Biomedical Informatics

Faculty

Rebecca Crowley, MD, MSIS - Assistant Professor

Anil Vasdev Parwani, MD, PhD - Associate Professor

Sharon Winters, MS, RHIA, CTR - Director, Registry Information Services, UPMC Cancer Centers
Adjunct Instructor, University of Pittsburgh

Cancer Informatics Service (CIS) Support (Back to top)

Brenda Crocker
Database Administrator IV
Phone: 412-647-6599
Pager: 412-958-8192
E-mail: crockerbl@upmc.edu

Michael Davis
Programmer IV
Phone: 412-647-5361
Pager: 412-958-3092
E-mail: davismk@upmc.edu

Jeff McHugh
Business Systems Analyst IV
Phone: 412-647-6593
Pager: 412-565-0865
Email: mchughjs@upmc.edu

John Milnes
Database Administrator II
Phone: 412-647-9261
Pager: 412-958-1833
E-mail: milnesjt@upmc.edu

Kevin Mitchell
Programmer IV
Phone: 412-647-6601
Pager: 412-958-4904
E-mail: mitchellkj@upmc.edu

Andy Pople
Enterprise Software Architect
Phone: (412) 623-1662
E-mail: popleak@upmc.edu

Bob Rubin
Programmer IV
Phone: 412-647-2926
Pager: 412-958-1897
E-mail: rubinr@upmc.edu

Linda Schmandt
Software Manager
Phone: (412) 623-7868
Fax: (412) 623-2814
E-mail: schmandtlm@upmc.edu


Web Services / Infrastructure

Dan Goldberg
Editor / Project Manager
Phone: 412-647-3403
E-mail: goldbergdm@upmc.edu

Kim Nguyen
Designer
Phone: 412-647-6861
E-mail: nguyenkt@upmc.edu

Eric Richie
Web Developer
Phone: 412-647-3683
E-mail: richiee@upmc.edu






Desktop Support:

Chuck Susanin
Systems Analyst III
Phone: 412-647-5801
Pager: 412-765-7449
E-mail: susanincj@upmc.edu

LAN Support

Gary Burdelski
LAN Administrator III
Phone: 412-647-2539
Pager: 412-958-8560
E-mail: burdelskigm@upmc.edu

Ryan Mitchell
LAN Administrator II
Phone: 412-647-9842
Pager: 412-958-1582
E-mail: mitchellrd@upmc.edu

Systems Support and Development:

Julia Michel
Business Systems Analyst II
Phone: 412-623-4637
Email: micheljs@upmc.edu



Administrative Staff (Back to top)

Genine Bartolotta
Administrative Supervisor
Pathology/Oncology Informatics & Informatics Program
Phone: 412-647-2730
Email: bartolottagm2@upmc.edu

Linda Mignogna
Administrative Support Staff
Phone: (412) 623-5922
E-mail: mignognalk@upmc.edu

Barbara Karnbauer
Director of Operations,
Pathology/Oncology Informatics & Informatics Program
Phone: 412-647-1298
Email: karnbauerbj@upmc.edu

Wendy Hilliard-Frank
Administrator, APIII - Manager/Coordinator
Phone: 412-623-3940
Email: hilliardwm@upmc.edu