Category Archives: Top Stories

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Call for proposals for the 2018 Michigan IT Symposium

How does your work move U-M forward in its mission to provide world-class teaching, research, and patient care? How is your work changing with the evolution of technology? Showcase your most innovative, IT-related project, service, or process improvement at the fifth annual Michigan IT Symposium, November 28 & 29, 2018 Submit your application before August 10. Important dates… Read More »

Profiles in IT: Melissa Thurber—project manager, customer advocate

Melissa Thurber, was recently interviewed about her work on the Software Delivery Team. The Health Information Technology & Services (HITS) project manager began her career in IT working in the digital marketing space. Thurber understands what customers are looking for, making her contributions to healthcare IT all the more impactful. Tell us about your role and responsibilities. I… Read More »

Export Controls CoP expands to address CUI

A new Community of Practice (CoP) group has been established to address the challenges U-M programs, faculty, students, and employees may face with the federal government’s Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) program. The new U-M CUI CoP has evolved from the Export Controls CoP, which now falls under the umbrella of the CUI CoP. U-M, like all research universities,… Read More »

ITS launches the Cloud Infrastructure Transformation Program

We all have read plenty of stories about organizations moving their systems and applications to the cloud. Many individuals and units at U-M have made their own forays into the cloud, and it’s now time for ITS to provide a way to facilitate the university’s use of cloud services. In March, 2018 ITS formed the ITS Cloud Infrastructure… Read More »

U-M preparing for GDPR

A cross-university working group has been working for months to prepare U-M for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which goes into effect on May 25. To date, these efforts have included developing a risk-based GDPR compliance strategy, making important decisions regarding key requirements of the regulation, developing key GDPR processes and tools, and making recommendations for an… Read More »

Charting a course: ITS Cloud Decision Framework & Application Roadmapping Project (CFAR)

ITS has embarked on a journey to determine which of the hundreds of applications that we manage should be candidates for migration to the cloud. Unlike other institutions, U-M is not being driven to these decisions by a need to free up data center space, or many of the drivers currently faced by other universities. We have the… Read More »

Dearborn moves the Internet

It wasn’t an earthquake, but it sure shook things up. The start of a building renovation for the Engineering Lab Building (ELB) required moving the network connection for the Dearborn campus. A collaborative team built of Dearborn ITS, Merit, and Ann Arbor ITS Infrastructure created new network paths that not only added redundancy and stability, but they did… Read More »

ITS uses Canvas data to improve Undergraduate Nursing program’s clinical evaluations

By | April 27, 2018

ITS Teaching & Learning data concierge Jeff Ziegler recently completed a project for the School of Nursing’s Undergraduate Nursing program that has greatly improved their student evaluation process. Working with clinical instructor Diane Accurso and student advisors Rachel Patterson and Chad Gorski, Ziegler designed and implemented a custom solution for their Professional Nursing Education (PNE) clinical course that uses… Read More »

EMERSE: Michigan Medicine’s powerful medical record search engine

Any note or document that is written by a medical professional (like a doctor, pharmacist, nurse, or social worker) is called free text, meaning anything goes—from syntax errors to misspellings to abbreviations, and more. That’s tough for a search engine to navigate. To get any information at all for things like research studies or billing information, users would have… Read More »

Tech innovation redefines Medical School curriculum

The U-M Medical School is undergoing a curriculum transformation to develop future physician leaders in health care. In the previous model, students spent the first two years of their education focusing on science and the second two years in the clinic working with patients. In the new curriculum, students are exposed to the clinical aspects of medicine in… Read More »

“Father of the Internet” retires from U-M

Douglas Van Houweling, UMSI professor of information, also known as the “Father of the Internet,” retired in April after a long, remarkable career at UMSI and U-M. During his time at U-M, Van Houweling has served as UMSI associate dean for research and innovation; U-M dean for academic outreach and vice provost for information and technology; and U-M… Read More »

Register for Enriching Scholarship 2018

Registration for the 21st Annual Enriching Scholarship Conference opens April 2. Sessions will be held May 7-11. During Enriching Scholarship, U-M faculty and staff can participate in over 100 sessions about how to effectively integrate teaching and technology. All sessions are FREE, but require registration. Keynote address & workshop This year’s keynote speaker is Katie Linder of Oregon State… Read More »

Helping you to find the phish

Following successful pilots within the departments of Pathology and Family Medicine to identify and report simulated phishing emails, Information Assurance (IA) and Health Information Technology & Services (HITS) are gearing up to conduct a phased, anti-phishing educational awareness campaign throughout all of Michigan Medicine. HITS staff will be the initial target group to receive a series of simulated… Read More »

Michigan Medicine keeps smartphones smart… and secure

For nearly a year, Michigan Medicine has used AirWatch to provide the required encryption and information assurance necessary to safely access secure internal resources on smartphones, tablets, and laptops. The organization’s policy requires staff to enroll personally owned devices in AirWatch if they are used to access the internal wireless network or share sensitive healthcare information. Health Information Technology & Services… Read More »

Workshop offers IT tips for research travel

The flight is booked, the reservations made. You’re about to embark on your research trip to another country, time zone, continent…maybe all of the above. Understandably, you’ve focused on the logistics, and now you’re focused on the research fun. But, if you want to ensure a crisis-free experience, there’s another travel plan you need to make: the IT… Read More »

Dearborn ITS improves identity management

By | February 28, 2018

Dearborn ITS recently launched new processes for improving student identity management. Robert Ward (Enterprise Application manager) partnered with the Account Lifecycle Optimization (ALO) project team, UM-Dearborn Registrar and Admissions to develop new solutions with his team for improving student identity management. Uniqname student self-service UM-Dearborn leveraged the work of the ALO project to improve the uniqname account creation for… Read More »