News and Highlights
March 2010
Publications
Quality and Medical Informatics Division Study Shows E-Prescribing Significantly Reduces Errors
An article published online February 26, 2010, in the Journal of General Internal Medicine shows a dramatic decrease in prescription errors in ambulatory physician practices that use electronic prescriptions. The study, titled “Electronic Prescribing Improves Medication Safety In Community-Based Office Practices,” was led by Rainu Kaushal, MD, MPH, Chief of the Division of Quality and Medical Informatics, Director of Pediatric Quality and Patient Safety at the NewYork-Presbyterian Komansky Center for Children's Health, and Executive Director of the Health Information Technology Evaluation Collaborative (HITEC). The investigators found that healthcare providers using an electronic system to write prescriptions were seven times less likely to make errors than those writing their prescriptions by hand. Erika Abramson, MD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, was the article’s senior author. Additional co-authors included Lisa Kern, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Public Health and Medicine; Yolanda Barrón-Vaya, MS, Research Associate in Biostatistics; and Jill Quaresimo, RN, JD, of Taconic IPA. The study was supported by funding from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Read the medical college press release. The article was covered by Reuters, HealthNewsDigest.com, PharmacyNews.com, PhysOrg.com, ChiroEco.com, BND.com, ScienceBlog.com, iHealthBeat.com, FierceEMR.com, For the Record Magazine, KMPH-TV (Fox CA) and
KXRM-TV (Fox CO).
Entire Issue of Technology in Society Devoted to C.P. Snow Lecture Series
Joseph J. Fins, MD, FACP, Chief of the Division of Medical Ethics and Professor of Medicine, Professor of Public Health and Professor of Medicine in Psychiatry; and Inmaculada de Melo-Martín, PhD, MS, Associate Professor of Public Health in the Division of Medical Ethics, were guest editors of a special issue of Technology in Society (Volume 32, Issue 1, January 2010) exploring the legacy of C.P. Snow on the 50th anniversary of his landmark book, Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. C.P. Snow was a British novelist and physicist who wrote about the divide that separates the sciences and humanities. The issue was based on the 2008-2009 Division of Medical Ethics Seminar Series, which addressed Snow’s legacy to the academy in general and to bioethics in particular. Many of the issue’s contributors—scholars from a variety of academic disciplines--were speakers at the seminar series. In addition to their jointly authored introduction, “C.P. Snow's ‘Two Cultures’ fifty years later: An enduring problem with an elusive solution,” Drs. Fins and de Melo-Martín authored two additional papers. Dr. de Melo Martín provided an analysis of the volume in her essay, “The Two Cultures: An Introduction.” Dr. Fins authored “C.P. Snow at Wesleyan: Liberal Learning and the Origins of the ‘Third Culture,’” an intellectual history of Snow, his work and his times as seen through the prism of his visit to Wesleyan University in 1961. The anthology includes essays by David J. Skorton, MD, President of Cornell University; Philip Kitcher, PhD, Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University; Stephen R. Latham, JD, PhD, Deputy Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics at Yale University; Stephen G. Post, PhD, Director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics at Stony Brook University; Rodney W. Nichols, a consultant on science and technology policy; and Bruce Jennings, MA, Senior Consultant and Fellow at The Hastings Center and Lecturer in Public Health in the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Dr. Yan Ma is Lead Author of Article in Statistics in Medicine
Yan Ma, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biostatistics in Public Health, was the lead author of an article in the March 15, 2010, issue of Statistics in Medicine titled “A U-statistics-based approach for modeling Cronbach coefficient alpha within a longitudinal data setting.”
This publication resulted from his CERT pilot grant, “Modeling Cronbach Coefficient Alpha for Longitudinal Study Data: An Application to Orthopedics Research.” In the paper, the authors developed a novel approach to tackle the complexities involved in modeling correlated Cronbach Coefficient Alpha in a longitudinal data setting with missing data due to subject dropout. The method was applied to assess the internal consistency of the Knee Society rating Scores (KSS) pre- and post- total knee replacement in a study at the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS). Co-authors included Dr. Alejandro Gonzalez Della Valle from HSS, and Drs. Hui Zhang and Xin Tu from the University of Rochester.
Dr. Fins is co-author of JAMA commentary on Neuroethics and Publication of Deep Brain Stimulation Trials
Dr. Inmaculada de Melo-Martín Co-Authors Article on Social Aims of Research
An article titled Social Values and Scientific Evidence: The Case of the HPV Vaccine by Inmaculada de Melo-Martín, PhD, MS, Associate Professor of Public Health in the Division of Medical Ethics, and Kristen Intemann, PhD, of the Department of History and Philosophy at Montana State University, was recently published in Biology and Philosophy, 25(2) (2010): 203–213. Using the case of the recently developed HPV vaccines, the authors argue that the social aims of research can play important roles in justifying decisions about how research problems are defined in drug development, evidentiary standards used in testing drug “success,” and clinical trial methodology. As a result, attending to the social aims at stake in particular research contexts will produce more rational methodological decisions as well as more socially relevant science.
Biostatistics Division Faculty Are Editors of New Textbook
A new textbook titled Statistical Methods in Molecular Biology has recently been published by Humana Press (part of Springer Science+Business Media, LLC). The editors are Heejung Bang, PhD, Associate Professor of Biostatistics in Public Health, Xi Kathy Zhou, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biostatistics in Public Health, Heather L. Van Epps, Senior Editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine at Rockefeller University Press, and Madhu Mazumdar, PhD, Professor and Chief of the Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology. The book is part of a series called Methods in Molecular Biology (Springer Protocols). Among the many chapter authors were Dr. Bang, Dr. Mazumdar, Samprit Banerjee, PhD, Instructor of Biostatistics in Public Health, and Jennifer Sousa Brennan, formerly a Research Biostatistician in the Division. The book progresses from basic to more advanced statistical methods, comprehensively covering parametric and nonparametric, and frequentist and Bayesian methods. It is intended for molecular biologists who perform quantitative analyses on data from their field and for statisticians who work with molecular biologists and other biomedical researchers. Drs. Bang, Zhou, and Mazumdar were partially supported by a grant from the Weill Cornell Clinical & Translational Science Center.
Department of Public Health Faculty Contribute to Newly Published Book
Heejung Bang, PhD, Associate Professor of Biostatistics in Public Health, wrote the first chapter (“Introduction to Observational Studies”) of a book recently published by SAS Institute, Inc., titled Analysis of Observational Healthcare Data Using SAS. Hassan Ghomrawi, PhD, MPH, Instructor in Public Health in the Division of Health Policy and Outcomes Research Scientist at the Hospital for Special Surgery, coauthored the sixth chapte, “Instrumental Variable Method for Addressing Selection Bias,” with R. Scott Leslie, MPH. Andrew C. Leon, PhD, Professor of Biostatistics in Psychiatry and Public Health, is one of the book’s co-editors, along with Douglas E. Faries, PhD, Josep Maria Haro, MD, PhD, and Robert L. Obenchain, PhD.
Dr. Nathaniel Hupert Co-Authors Article on Pandemic Influenza Demographics
Nathaniel Hupert, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Public Health and Medicine and Director of the Preparedness Modeling Unit of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was a co-author of an article recently published in PLoS One titled “The Shifting Demographic Landscape of Pandemic Influenza.” The study provides a simple demographic explanation for the age bias observed for H1N1/09 attack rates, and suggests that this bias may shift in coming months. The results have significant implications for the allocation of public health resources for H1N1/09 and future influenza pandemics. The lead author was Dr. Shweta Bansal of the Pennsylvania State University and the Fogarty International Center of NIH, and the senior author was Dr. Lauren Ancel Meyers of the University of Texas at Austin and the Santa Fe Institute.
Dr. Hassan Ghomrawi Co-authors Article Quantifying Effect of Survivor Bias
Hassan Ghomrawi, PhD, MPH, Instructor in Public Health in the Division of Health Policy and Outcomes Research Scientist at the Hospital for Special Surgery, was a coauthor of an article published in the February 1, 2010, issue of the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology titled “Conclusion about the association between valve surgery and mortality in an infective endocarditis cohort changed after adjusting for survivor bias.” The article appeared in the journal’s Variance and Dissent section with three related commentaries. The study found that adjusting for survivor bias changed the conclusion about the association between valve surgery and mortality in infective endocarditis, and it strengthens the caution that researchers should be aware of this bias when evaluating observational studies of treatment efficacy. The lead author of the study was Dr. Imad M. Tieyjeh of King Fahd Medical City, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine. All other authors were from the Mayo Clinic. The study was supported by grants from the Mayo Clinic Infectious Diseases Division and Department of Medicine.
