HJAR Sep/Oct 2020

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS I  SEP / OCT 2020 33 For weekly eNews updates and to read the journal online, visit HealthcareJournalAR.com Arkansas.” After attending medical school at Jinnah Medi- cal and Dental College in Karachi, Pakistan, Hasan completed a residency in internal medicine at AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center in Atlantic City, N.J., and fellowship training in interventional cardiology and general cardiology at the Univer- sity of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.  Cardiologists at the Conway Regional Cardio- vascular Clinic specialize in the diagnosis, treat- ment, and management of diseases of the heart and blood vessels. Dr. Jason Pelton Joins CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs Heart Center CHI St. Vincent announced that Dr. Jason Pel- ton has joined the team of leading cardiologists serving the Hot Springs community and is now seeing patients at the CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs Heart Center, located at 200 Heartcenter Lane.  “We are honored to welcome Dr. Pelton to the incredible team of cardiologists here in Hot Springs,” said Dr. Douglas Ross, president of CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs. “His addition will allow us to continue to provide compassionate and quality care to cardiovascular patients in our southwest Arkansas community.” Pelton attended medical school at the Univer- sity of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and com- pleted an internal medicine residency at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, where he also completed fellowship training in cardiovascular disease and interventional cardiology. The CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs Heart Center performs diagnostic procedures, provides one- on-one treatment, and helps patients manage heart disease. The team of cardiologists works closely with cardiovascular surgeons to determine the best course of action for each patient. National Cancer Database at UAMS Becomes U.S. Storehouse for COVID-19 Images A national database for patient cancer images at UAMS has become the official storage site for all of the United States’ COVID-19 clinical images, including chest x-rays and CT scans of the body. UAMS also became the first research institution to contribute de-identified images of COVID-19 to the storage site, called The Cancer Imaging Archive. The archive is funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The archive is led by UAMS’ Fred Prior, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Bio- medical Informatics in the College of Medicine. With Arkansas data being the first to arrive, it will be a unique opportunity for researchers across the U.S. to see how COVID-19 is affecting a rural population. “Researchers are clamoring for this data,” Prior said. “At UAMS, we want to make sure the unique characteristics of our rural population in Arkan- sas are represented. Our state’s inclusion is really important as scientists are trying to figure out how this disease is evolving, how it’s impacting differ- ent groups of people, and why there are such a wide variety of symptoms and outcomes.” The majority of the COVID-19 images are chest X-rays, the most commonly used imaging proce- dure for COVID-19 in the U.S., Prior said. About 20% of UAMS cases also have CT scans, allow- ing more detailed analyses. In addition, many of the CT scans included the chest, abdomen, and pelvis. “We’re looking at internal organs other than just the lungs, which is important because more and more we’re seeing this disease impacting the kid- neys and the liver,” Prior said. The first batch of published de-identified images comes from 105 UAMS COVID-19 patients and includes a representative sample of the viral genomes found in the patients. The col- lection and publication of the data was funded by the UAMS Translational Research Insti- tute, which is supported by the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, grant UL1TR003107. The data is publicly available on the archive website at  https://www.cancerimagingarchive. net/collections/ “Making this de-identified image and genetic data available nationally is an important step as we work to better understand a disease that’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen,” said Laura James, MD, director of the Translational Research Institute. “UAMS is helping to lead the way, and we expect there will soon be thousands more patients represented in the imaging database from across the country.” In addition, she noted, her institute’s Compre- hensive Informatics Resource Center, which Prior leads, is helping the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) build a large central repository for COVID-19 research. That storehouse of data will be cross-linked with the imaging archive. The 62 NCATS-funded Clinical and Translational Science Award institutions, such as UAMS, have been invited to share their COVID-19 data in the repository, called the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C). Prior and Ahmad Baghal, MD, director of the UAMS Arkansas Clinical Data Repository, will pilot test the N3C’s mechanism for linking with UAMS clinical data in the repository and data from The Cancer Imaging Archive. “We are uniquely positioned to help lead these national efforts,” said Prior, who serves on the NCATS Governance Working Group and Tools Working Group. “The Cancer Imaging Archive was shovel-ready for this sort of project, and UAMS is fortunate to have superb data infra- structure thanks to the support of our UAMS and Translational Research Institute leadership.” UAMS-UAPB Partner to Increase Minorities in Healthcare; Address Health Disparities, Physician Shortages UAPB alumna Amanda Winston just took the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) this sum- mer, taking a definitive step toward a career goal she has had in mind since she was a kid in Pine Bluff--becoming a doctor. “As far back as I can remember, I’ve had an Jason Pelton, MD