The Yale Corporation has approved the transition of the Section of Biomedical Informatics & Data Science at Yale School of Medicine (YSM) to the Department of Biomedical Informatics & Data Science (BIDS).
An early leader in biomedical informatics, YSM holds one of the three longest-standing National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported training programs in this field. Historically, the many YSM faculty engaged in this work were distributed across departments in the school. In 2022, Lucila Ohno-Machado, MD, PhD, MBA, an internationally renowned expert in privacy-enhancing technologies and a National Academy of Medicine member, joined YSM to lead the free-standing BIDS section, coalescing the community and strengthening the infrastructure related to this research, and to serve as deputy dean for biomedical informatics.
Since joining YSM, Ohno-Machado has recruited major leaders in the field to YSM. Today, BIDS includes 12 ladder-track faculty, 13 research-track faculty, and 40 secondary faculty, who have received external awards for leadership and membership from the NIH and professional societies and served on numerous national committees, advisory boards, and university committees.
BIDS has made tremendous progress in carrying out its tripartite mission of research, education, and services, garnering substantial grant funding ($23 million to date). Its members are re-engineering processes for clinical data organization, analyses, and access, as well as developing the computational infrastructure needed to employ artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced analytics in a secure and privacy-protecting manner. Across these efforts, documenting and reducing health disparities is an essential focus.
Attaining department status will enable BIDS to build on this momentum, increasing its national profile and positioning YSM to lead AI in medicine. It further recognizes the achievements of Ohno-Machado and the talented BIDS faculty and strengthens the program’s effort to attract and retain leading talent.