Research Interests (2007/7/1 - present)

Keywords:

My research is essentially in the support of integration of information and collaboration among human experts in health sciences research and patient care to simplify information access and knowledge discovery. True integration does not come easily because it requires the commonality of both syntax and semantics, whose achievement is inseparable from collaboration.

Currently there are three main thrusts of research in my group:

1

This goal of this line of research is to enhance the collaboration in health sciences research and to help forge interdisciplinary health research teams. We use social network analysis to elucidate multi-dimensional connections among multidisciplinary obesity researchers. We also complement our analysis with surveys, interviews, or observational studies to understand the unmet information needs of clinical research investigators or multidisciplinary health sciences researchers.

Related Manuscripts
-- Weng, C. , D. Gallagher, M. Bales, S. Bakken, and H.N. Ginsberg. Understanding
Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Collaborations: A Campus-Wide Survey of Obesity
Experts. in Proc of 2008 AMIA Fall Symposium . 2008. in press (pdf)
-- Bales, M., S. Johnson, and C. Weng . Social Network Analysis of Interdisciplinarity in Obesity Research . in Proc of 2008 AMIA Fall Symp. 2008.in press (pdf)
-- Bakken, S., P.-Y. Yen, and C. Weng . Informatics Tools for Meeting Information and Communication Needs Related to Interdisciplinary Research Competency Development . in Proc of 2008 AMIA Fall Symp. 2008.in press. (pdf)
2

The goal of this line of informatics research is to improve the accuracy and efficiency of clinical trial research. We design automated semantic alignment methods to match clinical trial eligibility criteria to heterogeneous clinical data in electronic health records systems. We are also using electronic health records to conduct protocol feasibility studies and to achieve proactive design.

Related Manuscripts

-- Li, L., H. Chase, C. Patel, C. Friedman, and C. Weng. Comparing ICD9-Encoded
Diagnoses and NLP-Processed Discharge Summaries for Clinical Trials Pre-Screening:
A Case Study. in Proc of 2008 AMIA Fall Symp . 2008. in press (pdf)
-- Patel, C. and C. Weng . ECRL: An Eligibility Criteria Representation Language based on the UMLS Semantic Network in Proc of 2008 AMIA Fall Symp. 2008.in press (pdf)
-- Chunhua Weng, Semantic Dependency-based Natural Language Processing of Eligibility Criteria, Clinical Research Informatics Working Group Exhibition, AMIA 2008, in press.

3

This line of research is in collaboration with Professor George Hripcsak with two goals: to improve the usability of electronic health records (EHR) and hence to benefit longitudinal patient care and various clinical and translational research.

Related Manuscripts

-- George Hripcsak, Chunhua Weng, Richard Smiley, Phenotypic pipeline for genome-wide association studies, Microsoft Research Poster, July 2008.