A middle-aged woman with glasses and short hair, wearing a black jacket over a red top, smiling against a softly blurred background.

Joyce A. Mitchell, PhD, FACMI, FACMG

Languages spoken: English

Academic Information

Departments Primary - Biomedical Informatics

Board Certification

  • American College of Medical Genetics
  • American Board of Medical Genetics

Joyce A. Mitchell obtained her PhD in Population Genetics from the University of Wisconsin with postdoctoral training in clinical genetics and in medical informatics sciences. She is a Fellow of both the American College of Medical Informatics (FACMI) and the American College of Medical Genetics (FACMG). She is certified as a medical geneticist by the American Board of Medical Genetics and the American College of Medical Genetics.

In 2005, Dr. Mitchell was recruited by the University of Utah to serve as Department Chair for Biomedical Informatics. In 2007 she was appointed as Associate Vice President for Health Sciences IT, where she coordinates and directs the information technology resources for the academic mission. She is also the director of the Biomedical Informatics Core for the Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences (CCTS)

Prior experience includes 25 years on the faculty of the University of Missouri School of Medicine in two departments: Child Health (Section on Medical Genetics) and Health Management and Informatics (Division Leader of Health Informatics). Administratively, she has served as the Director of the Medical Informatics Group, the Associate Dean for Information Technology for the School of Medicine, and the Chief Information Officer for University of Missouri Health Care. She spent a sabbatical year at the National Library of Medicine (2001) and developed the Genetics Home Reference to bridge the genomics research results with consumer health interests in genetic diseases.

Dr. Mitchell was elected to serve as President of the American College of Medical Informatics from 2008-2010, and will serve as immediate past-president until 2012. She is currently serving a four-year term on the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), and will serve on the Council of Councils for the National Institute of Health from 2012-2016. Dr. Mitchell serves as co-director of the NLM-sponsored course in Biomedical Informatics held annually at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

¿It was serendipity that brought me into the field of Informatics. I had just finished my PhD at the University of Wisconsin. I was looking for a postdoctoral position at the University of Missouri because my husband had a job in Columbia, Missouri. I met Donald Lindberg who said I had a great background for the new field called Medical Information Sciences (now called Biomedical Informatics). He had postdoctoral fellowships funded by the National Library of Medicine. I had never heard of this field and did not know what it was all about. However, I figured that it might be interesting for two years. It obviously became my major career path. I love this field because of the complexity of the issues and importance of the work to society as a whole across so many dimensions.¿

Research Statement

Informatics of Personalized Medicine; Biomedical Informatics and the CTSA grant; i2b2 partnership between the University of Utah and Harvard; Newborn screening registry; Genetics testing and genetics data in the EMR (including relating genotype to phenotype); Decision support systems for genetic data in the EMR; Pharmacogenetics and decision support for the EMR.

Education History

Undergraduate Stephens College
 BA
Doctoral Training University of Wisconsin
 PhD
Research Fellow University of Missouri, Information Science Group
 Research Fellow
Research Fellow University of California, San Francisco, Department of Pediatrics, Medical Genetics Unit
 Research Fellow

Selected Publications

Journal Article

  1. Deshmukh VG, Hoffman MA, Arnoldi C, Bray BE, Mitchell J (2009). Efficiency of CYP2C9 genetic test representation for automated pharmacogenetic decision support. Methods of information in medicine, 48(3), 282-90.
  2. de la Iglesia D, Maojo V, Chiesa S, Martin-Sanchez F, Kern J, Potamias G, Crespo J, Garcia-Remesal M, Keuchkerian S, Kulikowski C, Mitchell J (2011). International efforts in nanoinformatics research applied to nanomedicine. Methods of information in medicine, 50(1), 84-95.
  3. Mitchell JA, Gerdin U, Lindberg DA, Lovis C, Martin-Sanchez FJ, Miller RA, Shortliffe EH, Leong T (2011). 50 Years of Informatics Research on Decision Support: What's Next. Methods of information in medicine, 50(6), 525-35.
  4. Crockett DK, Lyon E, Williams MS, Narus SP, Facelli JC, Mitchell J (2012). Utility of gene-specific algorithms for predicting pathogenicity of uncertain gene variants. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 19(2), 207-11.
  5. Deshmukh VG, Meystre SM, Mitchell J (2009). Evaluating the informatics for integrating biology and the bedside system for clinical research. BMC medical research methodology, 9, 70.
  6. Deshmukh VG, Sower NB, Hunter CY, Mitchell J (2011). Integrating historical clinical and financial data for pharmacological research. BMC medical research methodology, 11(1), 151.
  7. Taylor DP, Stoddard GJ, Burt RW, Williams MS, Mitchell JA, Haug PJ, Cannon-Albright L (2011). How well does family history predict who will get colorectal cancer? Implications for cancer screening and counseling. Genetics in medicine, 13(5), 385-391.
  8. Taylor DP, Cannon-Albright LA, Sweeney C, Williams MS, Haug PJ, Mitchell JA, Burt R (2011). Comparison of compliance for colorectal cancer screening and surveillance by colonoscopy based on risk. Genetics in medicine, 13(8), 737-43.
  9. Beaudoin DE, Longo N, Logan RA, Jones JP, Mitchell J (2011). Using information prescriptions to refer patients with metabolic conditions to the Genetics Home Reference website. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 99(1), 70-6.
  10. Bradshaw RL, Matney S, Livne OE, Bray BE, Mitchell JA, Narus S (2009). Architecture of a federated query engine for heterogeneous resources. AMIA ... Annual Symposium proceedings. AMIA Symposium, 2009, 70-4.
  11. Maojo V, Fritts M, de la Iglesia D, Cachau RE, Garcia-Remesal M, Mitchell JA, Kulikowski (2012). Nanoinformatics: a new area of research in nanomedicine. International journal of nanomedicine, 7, 3867-90.
  12. Crockett DK, Piccolo SR, Ridge PG, Margraf RL, Lyon E, Williams MS, Mitchell J (2011). Predicting Phenotypic Severity of Uncertain Gene Variants in the RET Proto-Oncogene. PloS one, 6(3), e18380.
  13. Crockett DK, Ridge PG, Wilson AR, Lyon E, Williams MS, Narus SP, Facelli JC, Mitchell J (2012). Consensus: A framework for evaluation of uncertain gene variants in laboratory test reporting. Genome medicine, 4(5), 48.
  14. Crockett DK, Piccolo SR, Narus SP, Mitchell JA, Facelli JC (2010). Computational Feature of Selection and Classification of RET Phenotypic Severity. Journal of data mining in genomics & proteomics, 1(103), 1000103.

Book Chapter

  1. Meystre SM, Narus S, Mitchell J (2011). Clinical Research Informatics in the Post Genomic Era. In Press,
  2. Facelli JC, Hurdle JF, Mitchell J (2011). Medical Informatics and Bioinformatics. In Press,

Conference Proceedings

  1. Bradshaw R, Staes C, Del Fiol G, Schultz N, Narus S, Mitchell (2012). Going FURTHeR with Metadata. 164.

Abstract

  1. Crockett DK, Lyon E, Williams MS, Narus SP, Facelli JC, Mitchell J (2011). Utility of gene-specific algorithms for predicting pathogenicity of gene variants. San Francisco.
  2. Lee S, Crockett DK, Wood GM, Jung CY, Bray BE, Michell JA, Eilbeck (2011). Capturing structured gene variant data using GVF, XML and HL7. San Francisco.