James D. Buntrock

James D. Buntrock began his professional career as a software developer at Mayo Clinic in 1991. He is currently the division chair for Research and Education Support Systems, supporting software systems and technology projects for research and education missions.

Mr. Buntrock is also serving as the information technology (IT) director for Mayo Clinic's three collaborative centers — the Center for Individualized Medicine, the Center for Regenerative Medicine and the Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery — supporting discovery, translation and application of new models of care along with new diagnostics and therapies.

Mr. Buntrock has been active in the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) Vocabulary and Common Data Elements and Architecture workspaces, the National Center for Biomedical Ontology, and the Health Level Seven Common Terminology Services V2 specification.

He has also served as manager for several extramural and intramural projects related to knowledge representation, vocabulary services, natural language processing, and genomic data collection and bioinformatics analysis. These include the Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics, Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) and Beacon.

Focus areas

• Research applications. These support the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center, the Research Laboratory Information Management System, the Clinical Trials Management System and the Mayo Integrated Research Information System (which provides support for research administrative functions).
• IT for research. This includes support for research programs and cores for clinical informatics, bioinformatics, pharmacogenomics, proteomics, biomedical image processing and biostatistics.
• Analytic applications. Software created supports a range of activities for coding and classifying biomedical information, analysis and workflow, natural language processing, scientific computing, statistical analysis, and information retrieval.
• Education applications. These support the five schools in the College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic; the Education Technology Center; the Multidisciplinary Simulation Center; and the MayoExpert point-of-care knowledge management and delivery system.

Significance to patient care

With genomic-based medicine rapidly emerging, IT is playing an even more pivotal role in shaping science and discovery. New computation methods, analytic workflows and storage techniques have accelerated the process of discovery, translation and application.

IT is vital for clinical and translational research as new diagnostic, prognostic and treatment options are moved into the clinical practice. IT will enhance Mayo Clinic's electronic medical record, enabling health care providers to order new tests, retrieve test results and access medical knowledge, leading to improved decision making and patient care.

Professional highlights

• Embodying the Vision Award, Vocabularies and Common Data Elements Workspace, cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG), 2007