Lab Information
Dr. Fruhling, Professor, served as the founding Director of the School of Interdisciplinary Informatics at UNO and a Charles W. and Margre H. Durham Distinguished Professor of College of Information Science and Technology from 2010-2020. The School offers four degrees: Cybersecurity, Bioinformatics, Biomedical Informatics, and IT Innovation. Since 2004, Dr. Fruhling has served as the Director of the Public Health Informatics Research Laboratory, supporting many Graduate Research Assistantships and employing over 90 undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students. She has over 100 publications and has been a PI/Co-PI on research projects totaling over $8.53M.
Dr. Fruhling's research focuses on health informatics and evaluating and improving human-computer interaction efficiency and effectiveness in the healthcare and public health domains. Since 2002, she has been the PI of an emergency response system and bioterrorism surveillance system for public health laboratories called STATPack™, which has been deployed in over 65 health laboratories. Dr. Fruhling is a Co-PI on an NIH R01, ARHQ grant that focuses on optimizing the EHR for cardiac care and the PI for a UNO/UNMC collaborative grant sponsored by the Department of Transportation and awarded by UNL’s University Transportation Center that is conducting research and development to minimize the health impact to first responders in the case of a HAZMAT transportation incident using internet of things (IoT). In addition, Dr. Fruhling is a Co-PI for the Biomedical Informatics KCA that supports the UNMC NIH IDeA Center for Translational Research.
Research project highlights
- PI or Co-PI on over 40 research projects with total funding in excess of $8.5M. Dr. Fruhling’s research has been sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, NASA, Department of Defense, Centers for Disease Control, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, US Department of Transportation, Nebraska Crime Commission, Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, Oklahoma State Department of Health Public Health Lab, Kansas Department of Health and Environmental Laboratories, Nebraska Emergency Management Agency, Association of Public Health Laboratories, Nebraska Research Initiative, and the Rural Futures Institute.
- Co-PI, “Optimizing the Electronic Health Record for Cardiac Care”, National Institutes of Health R01 grant with PI Dr. John Windle, MD, Cardiologist, UNMC. The R01 grant includes collaborating with scientists at Duke University Medical Center, Swedish Medical Center, Christiana Care, Parkview Health, and the VA. $2.4M. 2014-2019.
- PI, “STATPack – Emergency Response System for Public Health,” CDC, NPHL, KDEHL, OSDPHL, HRSA. Partnership with Nebraska Public Health Laboratories, Oklahoma State Public Health Laboratories, and Kansas State Public Health Laboratories. Since 2002, my team and I continue our long-running research project supporting a Public Health Emergency Response Information System (STATPack) for three State Department of Public Health Laboratories. This project focuses on researching, evaluating and implementing technical solutions for a public health emergency response information system that is affordable, robust, secure and usable. We have overcome the barriers to entry in supporting rural healthcare. Today, 65+ STATPacks connect rural and metropolitan hospitals laboratories to three state public health laboratories. Not only do these systems communicate within their own state networks, they now share important public health information across state lines. This research project has made a direct positive impact on the quality of life for rural citizens in delivering timely microbiology consultations. I work closely with Nebraska Public Health Scientists Dr. Steven Hinrichs, MD, UNMC and Dr. Pete Iwen, PhD, UNMC. Funding to Date: $1.182M. 2002-Present.
- Co-PI, “Region 7 UTC/MATC,” U.S. Department of Transportation. Our focus is on using technology and the Internet of Things to monitor drivers and first responders when hazardous chemical incidents occur. UNO Sub-award, $500K, UNL award $14M. 2017-2022.
- Co-PI, Great Plains Institutional Development Award-Clinical and Translational Research, IDeA CTR, National Institutes of Health. I am co_PI on the Biomedical Informatics KCA working with Dr. James McClay, MD, Emergency Medicine; Dr. Ashok Mudgapalli, PhD; and Dr. Chittibabu Guda, Public Health. UNO Sub-award, $1.2M; UNMC IDeA CTR award $20M. 2016-2021.
- Principal Investigator, “Heartland 2050, Metropolitan Area Planning Agency—Decision Support GIS and GUI Usability Study”, US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In this project we built a GIS prototype for MAPA. $200,000. 2012.
- Co-PI, “Citizen Science as a Tool for Temporal Water Quality Assessment at the Major Watershed Scale,” National Science Foundation EAGER project, with Dr. Alan Kolok, PhD, UNO/UNMC and Dr. Shannon Bartelt-Hunt, PhD, UNL. In this project we created a mobile application for data entry by citizen scientists and a website for tracking and analysis. $100K, 2016-2017.
- Principal Investigator, “Juvenile Case Management System” and “Juvenile Diversion Case Management System”, Nebraska Crime Commission. CPHI assisted the University of Nebraska Juvenile Justice Institute and the Nebraska Crime Commission to provide information technology services to track the effectiveness and activities of 46 counties that manage juvenile diversion programs. This project is referred to as the Juvenile Diversion Case Management System. Other R&D projects consist of e-mentoring for juveniles who are institutionalized, using IT to assist the juvenile re-entry program, and Access to Recovery for adults. All of these projects involve a critical human computer interaction research component. The JDCMS project expanded 3 years ago to provide data management support for all programs for youth that are at risk. Funding to date: $750,056. 2011-Present.
- Co-PI, “Assessing USSTRATCOM Critical Research Needs,” USSTRATCOM. I worked closely with Nebraska Strategic Research Initiative scientists and UNO scientists James Taylor, Dr. Gina Ligon, PhD, and Dr. Doug Derrick, PhD. $109,427. 2013.
- Co-PI, Research Scholar, Northrup Grumman, USSTRATCOM, Command and Control Strategic Executive Systems (C2SES), project, DOD. Dr. Qiuming Zhu, PhD, UNO Computer Science also work on a related project for this award. Award amount: $555,466. 2005-2009.