The mission of the Department of Biomedical Informatics (BMI) is to improve people’s lives through innovation in research, education and patient care. We seek to achieve this mission by pursuing the advancement of health and biomedicine through the development, application and dissemination of novel biomedical informatics theories and methods capable of driving biological discovery, generating and translating knowledge, and advancing personalized healthcare.

These innovation focus areas rely upon theories and methods generated by a variety of BMI sub-domains including bioinformatics, computational biology, translational bioinformatics, clinical research informatics, clinical informatics and imaging informatics.

Four cross-cutting core competencies underlie our mission and vision: the understanding of human factors influencing the use of technology in the health science and biomedical domains; the application of knowledge engineering principles to support the design of intelligent systems; the use of high-performance computing principles to facilitate the analysis of multi-dimensional data; and the generation of information and knowledge from component sources using the principles of data science.

BMI was established in 2001. It’s led by Dr. Lang Li (Chair) and Dr. Soledad Fernández (Vice Chair) who are recognized as international leaders in the application of biomedical informatics theories and methods to advance clinical and translational science. BMI is home to a rapidly expanding program of basic and applied biomedical informatics innovation, catalyzed by a wealth of biological and clinical problems generated by the comprehensive basic science and clinical units that make up the OSU Wexner Medical Center (OSUWMC), as well as regular collaboration with the broader Ohio State community. BMI houses undergraduate, graduate, postgraduate, professional, and distance education programs as well as a suite of biomedical informatics services targeting the needs of the basic, clinical and translational research communities at Ohio State and in the central Ohio region.