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Bruce A. Houtchens, MD

Student Paper Competition & Award

This award was established in memory of Bruce A. Houtchens, MD, a surgeon, physicist, mathematician, aeronautical and astronautical engineer, and a fine human being. His main interests included trauma surgery/critical care, space medicine, and clinical applications of telemedicine and medical informatics. It is hoped that this Award will stimulate gifted students to open new horizons of medical technology and seek better ways of integrating medical technology into medical education and clinical practice. The first award was presented in 1997.

The $2,000 award is given to the winner of a paper competition. Students are invited to submit peer-reviewed, accepted papers expressing original ideas and reasonably complete research or development efforts in the areas of health informatics or telemedicine, broadly defined as the application of computer, communication, or information technology to healthcare. 

Bruce A. Houtchens, MD

A personal reflection by Dr. Homer Warner describes Bruce, as follows:

“Bruce and I had many long discussions about how essential computers were and would become in providing medical care.  Bruce was a brilliant student and had excellent ideas and projects that just seemed to “flow” from his intellect.  Instead of just one project, Bruce proposed three as potential MS thesis projects.  He became involved in a project to provide electronic, radio communications from injured soldiers on the battlefield.  His forward-thinking about how to instrument, communicate, and computer process data from an injured soldier in battle really overtook Bruce.”  The Master of Science in Medical Informatics Degree was awarded to him posthumously in 1995.

Student Paper competition

Students are invited to submit peer-reviewed, accepted papers expressing original ideas and reasonably complete research or development efforts in the areas of health informatics or telemedicine, broadly defined as the application of computer, communication, or information technology to healthcare.

award & scholarship recipients

Year

Winner

Paper Title

2021

Janette Vazquez, PhD

Using Supervised Machine Learning Classifiers to Estimate Likelihood of Participating in Clinical Trials of a De-identified Version of ResearchMatch

2016

David Jones, PhD

Predicting cytotoxicity of PAMAM dendrimers using molecular descriptors

2015

Chad Hodge, MS, PhD

Problem Management Module:
An Innovative System to Improve Problem List Workflow

2014

Jason Jacobs, PhD

Clinical Decision Support Availability at U.S. Transplant Programs: current barriers and opportunities for managing liver transplant patients

2013

Julien Thibault, MS, PhD

iBIOMES: Managing and sharing biomolecular simulation data in a distributed environment

2012

Sharanya Raghunath, PhD

Ontology-Based Data Integration Method to Characterize the Maturation of Dendritic Cells 

2011

T. Elizabeth Workman, PhD

Dynamic Summarization of Bibliographic-Based Data

2010

Stephen Piccolo, PhD

Clinical and Molecular Models of Human Glioblastoma Multiforme  Survival

2009

Bryce Christensen, PhD

The sumLINK Statistic for Genetic Linkage Analysis in the Presence of Heterogeneity

2008

Guilherme Del Fiol, MD, PhD

Classification Models for the Prediction of Clinicians’ Information Needs

2007

Shannon A. Sims, MD, PhD

Linked data demonstrates increase in methadone prescriptions and methadone-related deaths in Utah, 1997-2004

2006

Jau-Hei Lin

Evaluation of Information Implied by Missing Data Elements for Clinical Decision Support Systems

2005

Christopher Maloney, MD, PhD

Automated, computerized weaning of childhood respiratory failure

2004

Nancy Nelson, BSN, RN, MS

Can Educational Interventions Improve Timeliness of Computerized Medication Documentation by Nurses?

2003

David P. Taylor, MS

User-Centered Development of a Web-Based Preschool Vision Screening Tool

2002

Marcelo Fiszman, MD, PhD

Utilization Review of Heat CT Scans:  Value of a medical Language Processing System

2001

Thomas A. Oniki, PhD

The Effect of Computer-Generated Reminders on Charting Deficiencies in the ICU

2000

Charles J. Mullett, MD, PhD

The Impact of a Pediatric Antiinfective Decision Support tool

1999

Gregory A. Patton, MD, MS

The Two-Edged Sword:  Technology's Role in the Shaping and Control of Medical Practice

1998

Robert Patterson, MD, MS

A Computerized Reminder for Prophylaxis of Deep Vein thrombosis in Surgical Patients

1997

Joseph D. Dalto, MS

Automated Collection of Infusion Pump Data:  Nurse Utilization and Its Effects on Clinical Data

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