Imagination: A Process. Not a Moment

Part 3 of a three-part series discussing the importance of imagination. Part 1 is here and part 2 is here. Over the past two months, I’ve been sharing my ideas about the importance of cultivating imagination to stimulate innovation. Most of this is great fun, and I hope I’ve enticed you to do some of … Continue reading Imagination: A Process. Not a Moment

Investing in a Sustained Partnership: A Data-Driven Human Approach to Social Justice and Equity

Guest post by Patricia Matthews-Juarez, PhD, Chair of the Environmental Health Information Partnership (EnHIP) and Rueben C. Warren, DDS, MPH, DrPH, MDIV, Scientific Advisor for EnHIP In 1989, after many successful years of developing scientific and technical databases, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) started its first long-term outreach plan to train health professionals how … Continue reading Investing in a Sustained Partnership: A Data-Driven Human Approach to Social Justice and Equity

Innovation through Imagination — Envisioning the Future of Technology-Supported Care

Part 2 of a three-part series discussing the importance of imagination. I’ve been thinking a lot about imagination lately and how essential it is for stimulating innovative approaches to complex problems. We need innovation in health information technology (health IT) now more than ever with what we’ve been through — a global pandemic, rising calls … Continue reading Innovation through Imagination — Envisioning the Future of Technology-Supported Care

What Did You Do with Your Summer Vacation?

Well, if you are spending the summer at the NIH, you’ve likely been engaged in one of our many activities designed to access critical data and advance our understanding of the human experience by linking data sets together. Today, we are inviting you to engage in some additional best practices in accessing controlled data in … Continue reading What Did You Do with Your Summer Vacation?

Five Years and Counting!

On August 13, 2016, I became the first woman, nurse, and industrial engineer to serve as director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM). From its beginning in 1836 as a small collection of books in the library of the U.S. Army Surgeon General’s office, NLM has become a global force in accelerating biomedical discovery … Continue reading Five Years and Counting!

Dr. Isaac Kohane: Making Our Data Work for Us!

Last weekend, Isaac Kohane, MD, PhD, FACMI, Marion V. Nelson Professor of Biomedical Informatics, and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School received the 2020 Morris F. Collen Award of Excellence at the AMIA 2020 Virtual Annual Symposium. This award – the highest honor in informatics – is bestowed to an … Continue reading Dr. Isaac Kohane: Making Our Data Work for Us!

Introducing the NIH Guide Notice Encouraging Researchers to Adopt U.S. Core Data for Interoperability Standard

Recently, NIH issued a guide notice (NOT-OD-20-146) encouraging NIH-supported clinical programs and researchers to adopt and use the standardized set of healthcare data classes, data elements, and associated vocabulary standards in the U.S. Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) standard. This standard will make it easier to exchange health information for research and clinical care, and … Continue reading Introducing the NIH Guide Notice Encouraging Researchers to Adopt U.S. Core Data for Interoperability Standard

Some Insights on the Roles and Uses of Generalist Repositories

Guest post by Susan Gregurick, PhD, Associate Director for Data Science and Director, Office of Data Science Strategy, NIH Data repositories are a useful way for researchers to both share data and make their data more findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (that is, aligned with the FAIR Data Principles). Generalist repositories can house a vast … Continue reading Some Insights on the Roles and Uses of Generalist Repositories

Decoration Day, Pandemics, and the National Library of Medicine

Military cemetery in the background. Illustrations, photos and flowers overplayed in foreground.

This week we celebrate Memorial Day, a federal holiday to honor our veterans and remember the men and women of the U.S. military who gave their lives in the service of our country. Originally known as Decoration Day, this was a day for Americans to commemorate the memory of departed soldiers by adorning their graves … Continue reading Decoration Day, Pandemics, and the National Library of Medicine

Celebrating National Nurses Day: Compassion. Expertise. Trust.

Five different type of nurse. Four are wearing face mask and one is not.

Tomorrow, we celebrate National Nurses Day! I salute my nurse colleagues who work tirelessly to provide compassionate, expert health care to patients with a wide array of health challenges, and I affirm that NLM stands with you. I hope you can take a moment to absorb the outpouring of gratitude from around the world for … Continue reading Celebrating National Nurses Day: Compassion. Expertise. Trust.