Event Spotlight
Past Events
January 7 Work in Progress: Bridging the Oral Systemic Divide: An NLP Pipeline for Standardizing Dental Diagnoses in EHRs
Dr. Protiva Rahman, Research Assistant Professor in Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics, presented ongoing work to develop a natural language processing approach that extracts and standardizes dental diagnoses from unstructured clinical notes, mapping them to interoperable coding systems such as SNODENT. Attendees learned how this emerging pipeline can strengthen oral–medical data integration, enhance research capabilities, and lay the groundwork for future cross‑system interoperability.
November 5 Works in Progress: Exploring Dental Care Trends with MarketScan: Using Big Data to Inform Clinical Practice
Dr. Tumader Khouja, Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Dentistry and Behavioral Science at UFCD, presented key insights and trends in dental care utilization during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using big data from commercial claims in MarketScan, representing millions of insured Americans, her analysis explored patterns across various dental care types and discussed explanatory factors behind these trends. The presentation highlighted how these findings can inform clinical practice and future policy decisions.
October 1 Works in Progress: Utilizing LinkML for the Ontology of Dental Care-Related Fear and Anxiety
Finn Wilson, a doctoral candidate at the University of Buffalo, recently presented on the Ontology of Dental Care-Related Fear and Anxiety (ODFA) project. His talk introduced ontology concepts to dental professionals and researchers, highlighting how structured ontologies can enhance data interoperability and advance research on dental fear and anxiety
September 30 Works in Progress: Medicare Choices, Dental Coverage Literacy, and Access to Care
Cilia Zayas, Ph.D., M.H.A., M.S.F., a Postdoctoral Associate working with Dr. Astha Singhal will share her proposed NIH/NIDCR K01 mixed-methods study, investigating Medicare choices, dental coverage literacy, and their impact on dental care access and financial burden among older adults.
August 20 Works in Progress: Damayanthi (Daughty) Beera
Daughty Beera, Postdoctoral Associate working with Dr. Bill Duncan, presented her research applying natural language processing techniques—specifically topic modeling—to analyze textbook content and inform an ontology focused on healthy aging and transcendence. This innovative work is supported by the NIH-funded PHASES U01 grant.
Stephen Kostewicz led an insightful workshop on leveraging axiUm data for generating reports tailored to clinical operations, research (with appropriate IRB approvals), and various reporting requirements. Attendees gained practical knowledge on utilizing this powerful tool to enhance efficiency and data-driven decision-making.
April 29 Works in Progress: Owen Visser
Owen Visser, a doctoral candidate in Biostatistics at the University of Florida, shared insights from his research on American beliefs about water fluoridation and related topics. The study analyzed discussions on X (formerly Twitter) during the recent presidential elections and provided a compelling look into public sentiment and discourse surrounding this issue.
March 19 Big Mouth Webinar: Dr. Muhammad Walji
Muhammad Walji, Ph.D., M.S., the D. Bradley McWilliams Professor and Chair of the Department of Clinical and Health Informatics School of Biomedical Informatics at UT Health Houston, provided an overview of the BigMouth Dental Data Repository and gave examples of how this big data could be used for clinical research.
