CHIDS is an academic research center with collaboration from industry and government affiliates, and is designed to research, analyze, and recommend solutions to challenges surrounding the introduction and integration of information and decision technologies into the health care system. CHIDS offers the benefit of a world-class research staff and renowned scholars in technology implementation, adoption, assimilation, decision sciences and information technology. CHIDS serves as a focal point for thought leadership around the topic of health information and decision systems.

New & Noteworthy

• March 20, 2013: CHIDS Director Ritu Agarwal has been named a Dr. Theo und Friedl Schoeller Senior Fellow for 2013 by the Dr. Theo and Friedl Schöller Research Center at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. The Center aims at contributing to responsible leadership in business and society and has the key purpose to foster current thinking within an international context in the field of “Creating Cohesion–Designing Change–Realizing Innovation”.
  More at http://bit.ly/shoeller-research.
• March 1, 2013: Join us for our Distinguished Speaker Series Seminar on Agent-based Modeling and Public Health: Progress and Potential. Dr. Ross Hammond of the Brookings Institution will discuss how agent-based modeling has been and is being used in public health, with a particular emphasis on infectious disease modeling and obesity. April 17th, 2013 Noon - 2 p.m. in Van Munching Hall 2517. Send an email to Faye Baker at fbaker@rhsmith.umd.edu by March 31st for priority access.
• January 28, 2013: CHIDS alumnus Chad Konchak is part of the winning team for the 2013 Healthcare Informatics Innovator Awards for the Electronic Surveillance System that Flags Undiagnosed Hypertensive Patients. Chad is currently Director of Clinical Analytics at Northshore University Health System. Congratulations Chad! Full story at: bit.ly/InnovatorFirstPlaceWinner.
• January 25, 2013: Gordon Gao, CHIDS Co-Director, has won a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award with a grant of more than $400,000 based on his proposal for improving quality transparency in healthcare and informing consumer choice. The NSF CAREER Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the NSF’s most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research. Congratulations Gordon!
• November 8, 2012: AHRQ has published Designing Consumer Health IT: A Guide for Developers and Systems Designers, which was developed to highlight key strategies that have been used to produce outstanding consumer IT products that may be extensible to consumer health IT products. The guide presents 10 recommendations as a way to introduce new approaches to consumer health IT developers and companies that want to increase sales and better satisfy customers. CHIDS played an integral role in the Westat-led project team, funded by AHRQ under Contract No. HHSA290200900023I.
• October 5-6, 2012: CHIDS hosted the Third Annual Workshop on Health IT and Economics (WHITE 2012), which brought together a multidisciplinary health IT and economics research community, where new ideas with both policy and business implications where the focus of lively presentations and debate. Thank you to all our attendees, authors, presenters and sponsors for making WHIE 2012 a big success!
• September 19-21: CHIDS conducted a unique peer-to-peer based executive education program for state officials and health insurance exchange boards focused on setting up a successful exchange in their state. CHIDS is committed to accelerating the understanding and use of best practices for developing, governing and operating Health Insurance Exchanges. Visit the HIX Leadership Program site to learn more.
• July 6, 2012: CHIDS team with eGlobalTech's "HIT Ventures" (with JV partner Clinton Rubin) has been awarded the HHSCIOSP3Contract Vehicle administered by NITAAC. The contract will support planning, acquisition and deployment of large-scale IT program requirements across federal and DoD agencies and has a $20B ceiling value.
• April 20, 2012: Neostream, an online platform to improve outcomes for sick babies by better engaging parents in their care drew first place in the CHIDS Innovate 4 Healthcare Challenge, a collegiate competition based on radically improving healthcare through new processes that are enabled by innovative information technology applications and supported by a sustainable market strategy.

Research in Focus

• CHIDS researchers follow the adoption of a document management system Children’s National Medical Center. [Download Working Paper]
• What does health information privacy really mean? What type of health information are individuals willing to disclose for digitization purposes and to whom? Ph.D. candidate Catherine Anderson studies the complex nature of privacy concerns. [Download Working Paper]
• Does healthcare IT investment improve country health indicators? Professor Sunil Mithas and CHIDS Research Fellow Jiban Khuntia examine the link between investment and health outcomes across nations.
• Why do some hospitals choose to voluntarily disclose their quality performance online? Prof. Gordon Gao and his team explore the determinants of quality disclosure.