Informatics Analyst - Radiation Oncology

The mission of The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center is to eliminate cancer in Texas, the nation, and the world through outstanding programs that integrate patient care, research and prevention, and through education for undergraduate and graduate students, trainees, professionals, employees and the public.

The Oropharynx Program at MD Anderson was funded by Mr. and Mrs. Stiefel to create and leverage a central translational research infrastructure. Prior to initiation of the database, MD Anderson did not have the tools to regularly and efficiently track the changing demographics, treatments, and outcomes of our patients. To date, the database has maintained a significant milestone of >90% patient enrollment with comprehensive clinical and outcomes data available on over 1700 oropharyngeal cancer (OPC) patients treated at MD Anderson. Coupled with our Bioinformatics Core, this wealth of clinical and biomedical data has been and will continue to be instrumental in promoting collaborative research efforts focused on investigating tumor biology features, discovering new prognostic and predictive biomarkers, analyzing dynamic treatment responses, and develop toxicity profiling stratified by specific patient, tumor, and treatment characteristics.

The primary purpose of the Clinical Informaticist position is to leverage informatics-based approaches to critically evaluate and update our oropharynx clinical database with primary efforts focused on sustainability, interoperability between the database and various data sources (i.e. EHR, radiation therapy software, etc), standardized electronic form development for structured data capture, and improvement of the end user interface.

JOB SPECIFIC COMPETENCIES:

Advanced Database Design & Expertise in Health Information Systems

Content expertise in various database designs and standards is very important. Ability to critically analyze the current database infrastructure to develop an optimized data model fitted to the overarching goals of the oropharynx program is requested. Knowledge on practical management systems and health information exchange platforms is desired in order to allow for communication between currently disparate information systems. Familiarity in working with EHRs such as EPIC and HL7-FHIR based applications and/or commercial data repositories (such as smileCDR) is desirable.

Information Visualization

Designing of advanced information displays and automated reports using the clinical database is requested for usage by healthcare professionals to guide treatment recommendations and research initiatives. Automated display updates and redesigning of the current database user interface are desired.

Collaborative Teamwork Experience

Must be able to work efficiently and professionally with the entire clinical database team which currently includes a section lead, a project manager, two data coordinators, and a data analyst.

Health Data Science

Computational thinking to evaluate strengths and weaknesses of the current database, optimize database architecture, data wrangling, design algorithms for data analysis.

Advanced Biomedical Data Analysis

Experience with handling clinical data for design, analysis, interpretation, and evaluation of health information. Knowledgeable of advanced statistical methods in health informatics and appropriate usage of data analysis techniques for accurate interpretation of the health data available in the clinical database. Proficiency in one or more statistical software tools (i.e. SPSS, SAS, R) is expected.

Experience with NLP Algorithm Generation and Applications

Education
Required: Bachelor's degree in related field.

Preferred: PhD or a Master's degree in Health/Clinical Informatics

Experience
Required: Five years of related business, finance, project/process management experience.

Preferred: Prior work with hospitals or research groups is preferred. Analysts must have prior experience on projects (can include during training) managing clinical data. Following skills highly preferred,

• NLP Algorithm Generation and Applications
• Advanced Database Design and Management
• Programming knowledge (Python, SQL)

It is the policy of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to provide equal employment opportunity without regard to race, color, religion, age, national origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, disability, protected veteran status, genetic information, or any other basis protected by institutional policy or by federal, state or local laws unless such distinction is required by law. http://www.mdanderson.org/about-us/legal-and-policy/legal-statements/eeo-affirmative-action.html