The UNMC Department of Internal Medicine recognized its 2017-18 academic year research award winners at Grand Rounds on June 1 in the Durham Research Center.
These annual awards recognize faculty, house officers, post-doctoral fellows, visiting scientists, staff and medical students for their research achievements.
Ted Mikuls, M.D., professor in the division of rheumatology and vice chair of research, presented the awards.
2018 Internal Medicine Research Award Winners
- James Campbell, M.D. — Career Excellence Award
- Jacy Kubik — Daughton Award
- Shaohua Wu, Ph.D. — Post-Doctoral Research Award
- Matthew Purbaugh — Medical Student Research Award
- Bianca Christensen — Medical Student Research Award
Career Excellence Award winner James Campbell, M.D., professor in the division of general medicine, gave a presentation titled “Data-Driven Paradigms for Healthcare Research” to the Grand Rounds audience. Dr. Campbell has worked to develop a standardized electronic health record (EHR) system for more than 30 years and he is recognized for his efforts in Nebraska and around the world.
“Dr. Campbell’s pioneering work with electronic health record systems was one of the reasons I decided to start my faculty career at Nebraska,” said Tom Tape, M.D., professor and chief of the division of general medicine. “In the early 1980s, having a fully functional EHR deployed in an outpatient setting was nearly unheard of.”
Dr. Campbell had a vision for taking the early systems beyond just scheduling and billing, Dr. Tape said, and he designed and programmed to help make EHR systems what they are today — a true medical records system that supports patient care. Dr. Campbell also was a pioneer in studying the effect of an ambulatory EHR on patient care and the physician experience, Dr. Tape added, and he is internationally known because of his work on codification of medical terminology.
Dr. Campbell addressed deficiencies in the language of coding medical diagnoses by developing a dictionary of medical terminology based on the language that physicians used in their medical record documentation. The end result of this work was the “Nebraska Lexicon,”which is a collaboration with Scott Campbell, Ph.D., (no relation) assistant professor and director of informatics for the Public Health Laboratory and the Pathology Laboratory at the Buffett Cancer Center. The Nebraska Lexicon has been incorporated into commercial EHR products used worldwide.
Jim Campbell's contributions to linking clinical information with computable standards is truly an accomplishment. The Nebraska Lexicon developed by Jim over the past 10+ years continues to be an international model. Those of us who have been trained by and collaborate with Jim are incredibly fortunate.
Congratulations, Jim. Well deserved honor and recognition.
Judy and Clarence