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University of Wyoming

Research Interests

  • Medical informatics (computers and medicine)
    I am the Director of the Center for Rural Health Research and Education (CRHRE) in the University of Wyoming College of Health Sciences. The CRHRE's mission is to facilitate interdisciplinary approaches to integrating computing and communications technology with research and education to improve the health of rural populations.  One example of this is the Western Regional Biomedical Collaboratory, a project supported by a planning grant from the National Library of Medicine to develop mechanisms for sharing research data and resources at a distance among scientists at several Western universities.

  • Telemedicine
    A major area of my interest is telehealth/telemedicine, which involves the use of technology to support health care and the practice of medicine over distances or barriers. There are a number of projects nationwide ranging from remote database access to robotic surgery.  I am currently working on a statewide project, the Wyoming Network for Telehealth, or WyNETTE as well as a regional project, the SE Wyoming Telehealth Network, or SEWTN.  I am particularly interested in the problems of performance, security, and data quality in telemedicine systems and how adequate information can be transmitted over the Internet to support medical consultations as well as education.

  • Biomedical and Health Informatics

    I serve as Bioinformatics Core director for the UW IDeA Network for Biomedical Research Excellence (UW INBRE), a project funded by the National Institutes of Health.  This project involves the development of biomedical research infrastructure within Wyoming.  My focus is on improving UW's capacity for bioinformatics in research and education in the biological and life sciences.  I am affiliated with the Division of Biomedical and Health Informatics at the University of Washington School of Medicine because of my work in this area.

    In addition, I am involved with the Wyoming Health Information Organization, or WyHIO, in developing a health information exchange for Wyoming.  It is my belief that a federated, non-centralized system linking health information systems among hospitals, practitioners, clinics, etc. is a more reliable and acceptable mechanism for exchanging health information than a large centralized data repository.  A recent paper describing how such exchange could be accomplished is shown here (PDF). 

  • Reliable computing
    The complexity of computer systems, coupled with our increasing reliance on the services they provide, makes it imperative that we design and implement them to fail as seldom as possible. This is particularly true in safety-critical systems where human life or welfare depends on the system behaving in a predictable and reliable manner. When such systems include redundant hardware and software that support continued operation under failure conditions, they are known as fault-tolerant systems. I have worked for NASA and for the U.S. Air Force's Rome Laboratory on projects relating to the design and evaluation of reliable distributed computer systems, including fault-tolerant C3 (command, control, and communications) systems.

    Security is an important facet of reliability, particularly in Internet-based systems. I am particularly interested in developing systems for distributing information across the Internet without compromising privacy or confidentiality. These systems incorporate technology for authorization, accountability, encryption, and other mechanisms for protecting information.

  • Ethics and computing
    As a socially responsible scientist, I feel it is important to examine the consequences of the research I perform. I am interested in the ethics of computing research, as well as the issues of free speech on the Internet and the protection of personal privacy in the information age.