Collaborations Bolster Informatics Program

Hasan Sapci, M.D., chair of the College of Nursing and Public Health’s Department of Allied Health, has successfully initiated a collaboration with leading institutions to create a network of knowledge and make sure students are getting the most well-rounded healthcare informatics experience.

Current collaborators include Yale-New Haven Hospital, Mount Sinai Medical Center, the James J. Peters Veterans Administration Medical Center, St. Barnabas Hospital Health System and Winthrop-University Hospital.

According to Dr. Sapci, “Each institution excels in a different area, some in telemedicine and some in analytics. Now, depending on our students’ career plans, we have an opportunity to give them a field experience opportunity in the most appropriate setting.”

The benefits of these collaborations also include joint applications for federal grants and developing projects that combine the expertise of Adelphi faculty members. The College’s healthcare informatics curriculum integrates healthcare, business and technology as a solid preparation for a career in what’s projected to be among healthcare’s fastest growing sectors into 2020.

Dr. Sapci has been crafting an overarching plan for the program, and collaborating with other institutions is just the start.

“Building partnership agreements with academic medical centers was the first phase of my plan,” he said. “Recently, I founded a Health Informatics Training and Research and Development (R&D) Laboratory in another academic institution and developed a successful, replicable model. Now, I am building new collaborations with the industry, and this is the project’s second phase.”

Once that phase is successfully implemented, he said, the third phase of his plan will establish a second-generation Health Informatics Laboratory focusing on mobile and wireless health in the new Nexus Building and Welcome Center.

“Our students will have hands-on experience with state-of-the-art remote patient monitoring applications and be able to learn how these systems can be used to monitor patients, how clinicians can control medical devices, display, store, analyze and transmit patient-specific data,” he said.

He also expects the Health Informatics Laboratory to become a test bed for R&D projects. Th is would be a major boon for Adelphi, garnering more attention from possible investors while providing a robust learning environment for students. In fact, Dr. Sapci and Robert A. Scott, in one of his last acts as Adelphi president, recently secured a $50,000 donation to support the Health Informatics Training and R&D Lab.

Keeping up-to-date with the latest advancements in telemedicine and remote monitoring is key to maintaining the competitiveness of this program. As such, the Health Informatics Laboratory will also include robots and various remote monitoring devices, he said. The robots, which are about the same height as a human, can send patient data through a wireless network, view X-Rays, provide real-time physiological monitoring data and even examine a patient.

“In order to educate and train tomorrow’s clinicians, health informaticians and healthcare leaders, Adelphi University, as a leading academic institution, should retain its leadership in innovation and provide access to the latest medical hardware and software,” Dr. Sapci said. “Overall, we will provide a seamless education program and training environment to acquire all required skills to design and develop innovative medical informatics systems, and our students will have real-life experience to improve health outcomes using the latest informatics tools.”