



Belmont University College of Pharmacy third-year students Austin Simmons, Inmar Osi, Angie Babakitis, Mary Lankford, Deamitea’ Johnson, Lanoi Chindavanh chose the informatics program at Belmont University College of Pharmacy because it’s the only pharmacy school in the nation offering HIMSS approved courses and project experiences that prepare Pharm.D. students for advanced knowledge in health IT and healthcare.

This group is always taking on new challenges when it comes to the field of health care informatics, and becoming data analysts with Microsoft SQL is no exception.

Microsoft SQL is a relational database management system designed to retrieve big data from servers to answer analytical questions. The team was self-motivated, with minimal background in computer science, but has been successfully working hard to understand how SQL works by learning queries to access and report on large amounts of information in hopes of answering healthcare related questions.

The new SQL programmers worked with a variety of healthcare and related big data found on data.gov, where large amounts of information are stored for the purpose of finding answers to public health issues. One example of this was Inmar Osi’s research hypothesis which looked to see if there was a correlation between people with no high school diploma and depression rates in counties in Tennessee.

Another example of this can be seen with Austin Simmons’s research hypothesis which compared the rates of hospitalizations due to diabetic complications in areas of lower income compared to areas of higher income. The comparison looked to see if lower income zip codes had an increased rate of hospitalizations due to complication from diabetes.

The team was challenged to learn Microsoft SQL to contribute in the analysis of big data that will redefine healthcare and our profession for many decades to come. As student pharmacists who are learning to develop informatics skills, they have begun to see how important it is to be able to access this information, as this will help them better engage in the healthcare environment after graduation.

The informatics concentration at Belmont is collaborating with interested organizations to provide competent student and graduate healthcare informaticians with clinical knowledge as grad-student team members, and plans to expand their program to include residents and/or fellows. This collaboration would be of no cost to the partnering organization and could help to advance Healthcare Informatics initiatives currently underway or in the planning phase. To find out more about this exciting opportunity, please contact Dr. Blash at Anthony.Blash@belmont.edu