Elizabeth E. Umberfield, Ph.D., R.N.

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SUMMARY

Elizabeth (Liz) E. Umberfield, Ph.D., R.N., is a nurse scientist in the Division of Nursing Research. She is the first formally trained informaticist in the division. Her research focuses on amplifying patients' agency over their health care, health information and biospecimens throughout the digital health information ecosystem. Dr. Umberfield develops, evaluates and implements information resources, including:

• Standard terminologies.
• Ontologies and information models to support data integration.
• Interoperability and scalability of health information systems.

Focus areas

• Leveraging semantic technologies to make patients' choices machine-interpretable and interoperable.
• Measuring patients' understanding of permissions granted during consent processes, particularly for how their health information and biospecimens may be used for secondary purposes.
• Developing, testing and implementing technologies within clinical contexts that improve discoverability of, actionability of and fidelity to patients' choices.

Significance to patient care

It is essential that health information be interoperable and available across distributed health information systems and care delivery locations. This would allow patients and providers to come together and create informed, patient-centered plans of care and deliver care accordingly.