The Center's Mission

Stanford Center for Clinical Informatics (SCCI) is a Strategic Center at the Stanford University School of Medicine. In operation since September 2004, the core mission of the center is to foster the development of an interdisciplinary academic program focused on novel applications of information technology and computer science to health care, translational & clinical research and biomedical knowledge management. The Center emphasizes applied informatics, with the goal of contributing to the development of world-class information technology solutions supporting human health. The Center is directed by Dr. Henry Lowe, Associate Professor of Medicine and Senior Associate Dean for Information Resources and Technology.

What is Clinical Informatics?

Clinical Informatics is the scientific discipline that aims to enhance human health by developing novel information technology, computer science and knowledge management methodologies to prevent disease, deliver more efficient and safer patient care, increase the effectiveness of translational research, and improve biomedical knowledge access. It is truly an interdisciplinary field, involving clinicians, biomedical and computational scientists, knowledge management professionals, information technology professionals, educators and healthcare consumers.

The Electronic Health Record

A key focus of the center's activities is the Electronic Health Record (EHR). Healthcare is an intensely data-driven discipline. However, even today, most of the information used as part of the patient care process is paper-based. Important health information about individuals is scattered across many systems that do not, and cannot, communicate with each other. New national and international initiatives aim to define and implement a secure, patient-centric, longitudinal electronic health record that will store an individual's past and present health status, care received and plan of care, and that can be appropriately shared to improve health outcomes and enhance patient safety. Equally important as a focus is how the EHR can support the development of evidence-based medicine through translational, clinical and outcomes-based research, while ensuring the security and privacy of individual patient information.

Clinical and Translational Research

The Center's STRIDE (Stanford Translational Research Integrated Database Environment) project is a centerpiece of Stanford's efforts to facilitate and support clinical and translational research. STRIDE is an innovative, standards-based informatics platform that integrates a clinical data repository containing large amounts of clinical data from both Stanford hospitals, a fully integrated tissue bank database and a flexible research data management system. The Center offers a free Informatics Research Consultation Service to at Stanford faculty, staff and students. This consultation service covers research data management, privacy & security, access to SUMC clinical data for research purposes and general informatics questions.

Reaching Across Disciplines

Technology alone will not achieve the promise of Clinical Informatics. Complex legal, economic, human factors and societal issues must be addressed if information technology is successful in improving human health. To ensure that these important areas are addressed, SSCI strongly encourages active participation from across the University, from the business sector and from the community at large. SCCI supports the advancement of the field of Clinical Informatics by fostering multidisciplinary research programs, building industry-academic partnerships, hosting seminars and conferences, working with faculty to design undergraduate and post-graduate courses, developing internship opportunities, acting as an information resource and participating in global efforts to improve human health using information technology. Membership in the SCCI is open to all faculty, staff and students at Stanford University and its affiliated hospitals.

A Stanford Partnership

The Center for Clinical Informatics was created in partnership with a number of entities at Stanford including: Lucile Packard Children's Hospital (LPCH), Stanford Hospital and Clinics (SHC), the Stanford Biomedical Informatics Training (BMI) Program, the Office of Information Resources & Technology (IRT) and the Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research.