{"id":1498,"date":"2015-05-21T12:14:49","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T16:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/?page_id=1498"},"modified":"2025-12-16T15:15:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T20:15:12","slug":"research","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/offices-services\/md-program-offices\/registrars-office\/current-medical-students\/fourth-year-student-information\/fourth-year-elective-catalog\/research\/","title":{"rendered":"Research"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\" id=\"900.1\"><b>900.1\/MEDMD599\u00a0 Research Elective in Biomedical Science (non-clinical elective)<br \/>\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>Course Director<\/em><b>:<\/b> <strong>Shannon Fisher, M.D.<\/strong><strong>, Ph.D.\u00a0 <\/strong><a href=\"mailto:shanfish@bu.edu\">shanfish@bu.edu<\/a><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Course Coordinator: <\/em><strong>Ana Gregory \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><em>email: <\/em><a href=\"mailto:anagreg@bu.edu\">anagreg@bu.edu<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Period to be offered:<\/em> arranged with the MSRO<\/p>\n<p>The M4 Research Elective allows fourth-year medical students to undertake 4, 8, or 12 weeks of research for credit under the direction of a mentor. While many students will choose to work with BU faculty mentors, students may elect to participate in research with non-BU faculty at other institutions. At the end of the Research Elective, each student submits a project summary and is evaluated by their research mentor. Students may use this research elective to continue research projects started earlier in their training such as in the LEADS, MSSRP, or MD\/PhD programs. For additional details including the application process and due dates: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/medstudentresearch\/getting-involved-in-research\/m4-research-elective\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">M4 Research Elective Information<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>900.2\/MEDMD496 Research Elective: Assessing Utility of Patient Data Sets for Addressing Clinical Research Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Department of Internal Medicine (non-clinical elective)<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Course Directors:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Daniel Chen, MD, Department of Internal Medicine\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"mailto:chenda@bu.edu\">chenda@bu.edu<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Frank Meng, PhD, Department of Internal Medicine\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"mailto:fmeng@bu.edu\">fmeng@bu.edu<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>NUMBER OF STUDENTS: <\/strong>Maximum of 2 students per block<\/p>\n<p><strong>LENGTH OF ELECTIVE: <\/strong>4 weeks<\/p>\n<p><strong>AVAILABLE BLOCKS: <\/strong>July through April<\/p>\n<p><strong>DESCRIPTION OF ELECTIVE: <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Modern data science and analysis capabilities applied to clinical data sets has played a significant role in enabling many recent advances in medical research.\u00a0 However, each distinct clinical data set has inherent traits that dictate its utility for providing relevant answers to particular clinical questions.\u00a0 Characteristics such as the types of data elements being collected, frequency of collection, structured vs. unstructured format, consistency, completeness, and accuracy all play a major role in determining the overall effectiveness of the data for specific research studies.\u00a0 Quantifying and measuring data set attributes requires a deep understanding of the underlying clinical workflows that generate the data as well as a working knowledge of modern data modeling, capture, and curation practices.\u00a0 This elective will introduce students to techniques for identifying and analyzing the characteristics of patient data sets and provide hands-on learning opportunities for students to directly assess a data set\u2019s capacity for deconstructing various classes of clinical questions.\u00a0 Students will utilize patient data directly extracted from the VA healthcare system\u2019s electronic health record (EHR) that has been secured in a pre-approved repository, as well as other well-known open source data sets. \u00a0The VA EHR data contains clinical data such as demographics, medications, laboratory values, hospitalizations, surgical procedures, progress notes, and radiology reports.\u00a0 Examples of open source data include The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) clinical and molecular data and the MIMIC-III critical care database. \u00a0Questions that have been asked of the clinical data in the past have included determining the number of patients with lung cancer who had been identified prior to and after the LDCT national recommendation.<\/p>\n<p>Students will receive didactic instruction on the VA\u2019s clinical workflows as well as basic database principles such as relational data modeling and the Structured Query Language (SQL).\u00a0 Didactic instruction covers several introductory data science topics including database systems, the Structured Query Language, and standard analysis techniques. Laboratory sessions provide students with practical mentorship to ensure projects make timely progress. Students are familiarized with the workflows, processes, and practices involved in data generation that dictate the usefulness of the data.\u00a0 No previous data science knowledge is required but fundamental computer skills are necessary.<\/p>\n<p>Students will be required to work with the research mentors to obtain access to clinical data sets as a prerequisite approximately 8 weeks before the elective begins. At the beginning of the elective, students will meet with the research mentors to discuss research aims and formulate a preliminary timeline for the elective\u2019s major milestones. The timeline for the elective will generally consist of: finalization of research questions to be addressed and initial access to and familiarization with patient data sets (first week); comprehensive examination of data set characteristics and data analysis towards fulfilling research aims (second and third week); and finalize project results and generate documentation (fourth week). The main deliverable of this elective is a final presentation at a research-in- progress meeting of the VA Boston Informatics Group. If sufficient progress has been made, students may also develop an abstract or poster presentation targeted for informatics and\/or clinically related conferences.<\/p>\n<p>First week hours will be met and tracked by student participation and engagement in all five instruction and laboratory sessions. The second- and third-week hours will be met by students on their research projects and tracked by requiring students to send daily updates on their progress. Students in the fourth week will spend their time developing and giving their final presentation and writeup and hours will be tracked based on the quality of these artifacts.<\/p>\n<p>This elective will be held at the VA Boston Cooperative Studies Coordinating Center (CSPCC) offices at 5 Post Office Square in downtown Boston. The proposed research mentors will be Drs. Daniel Chen and Frank Meng.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>900.1\/MEDMD599\u00a0 Research Elective in Biomedical Science (non-clinical elective) Course Director: Shannon Fisher, M.D., Ph.D.\u00a0 shanfish@bu.edu Course Coordinator: Ana Gregory \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 email: anagreg@bu.edu Period to be offered: arranged with the MSRO The M4 Research Elective allows fourth-year medical students to undertake 4, 8, or 12 weeks of research for credit under [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7398,"featured_media":0,"parent":1458,"menu_order":21,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"bu-publication":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1498"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7398"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1498"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140501,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1498\/revisions\/140501"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=1498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}