Research Team

Kim Dunn, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, School of Health Information Sciences

Dr. Dunn is a practicing general internist with a PhD in epidemiology. She has extensive experience in applied informatics, outcomes improvement, translation of technology into community practice, development, strategic planning, and policy development particularly at the local and state levels. At the School of Health Information Sciences she has lead the establishment of the development activities for the Houston Health Information Exchange which has resulted in a funded demonstration project to test the sustainability hypotheses and test technology solutions in a defined test bed in the Greater Houston area. She served on the 2006 Texas Governor’s Health Information Technology Advisory Committee, chairing the Workgroup on Barriers to Physician Adoption. She is the Co-Chair for the April 15-16 Summit in collaboration with the Office of the National Coordinator and the Governor’s Office for a state-wide planning for the HIE. She teaches courses in Sustainable Telemedicine and Health Information Exchange, Project Management, and Consulting in Health Informatics. Her book on Sustainable Telehealth and Health Information Exchange will be published in summer, 2008 in conjunction with the Certificate Program in Telemedicine and Health Information Exchange. Prior to joining SHIS, she led the efforts for the successful telemedicine program and outcomes program at UTMB.

Ed Hsu, PhD, MPH, Associate Professor, School of Health Information Sciences

C. Ed Hsu is Associate Professor of Public Health Informatics, UTHSC-H School of Health Information Sciences. He is Director of Preventive Health Informatics and Spatial Analysis (PHISA) Lab in the School. He is participating in the project to strengthen the evaluation component, contribute to research and IRB application, and be responsible for data mangemetn and analysis. His graduate training was in health management and policy sciences, health informatics and health services organization. Before joining UT-Houston, between 2001-07 he served on the faculty of University of Maryland College Park, MD and University of North Texas Health Science Center at Ft. Worth, TX responsible for public health management information curricula and research. His IT background includes serving as Programmer Analyst for St. Luke’s Hospital (now Health Systems), Houston, Texas.

Dianne Love, PhD, University of Houston Clear Lake Program on Healthcare

She has collaborated on numerous physician evaluation projects including work with the Harris County Medical Society, Southern Medical Association, the American Board of Anesthesiology, and the American Medical Association. She has also worked with evaluation for new models for payments and systems for insurance and health maintenance organizations and self-insured employers. She will consult on the business planning and strategic relationships for physician and the analysis of impact on physician costs of quality and payer adoption.

James Langabeer, II MBA, EdD, CMA, FHIMSS, Associate Professor School of Public Health

Mr. Langabeer is a specialist in business administration, management systems, and healthcare finance. Before joining the University of Texas, he was the Deputy Controller and Executive Director in Finance at MD Anderson Cancer Center, where he oversaw planning, process improvement, supply chain, and finance. Prior to that he was the Executive Vice President at Demandtra Consulting (now Oracle Corporation) and a Director of Business at UTMB Hospitals and Clinics.

Osama Mikhail, PhD, Professor of Management School of Public Health

Dr. Mikhail is an expert in healthcare finance, planning and management and systems sciences. He has lead strategic planning for St. Luke’s Episcopal Healthcare System, Kelsey-Seybold Physicians, Episcopal Charities, pharmaceutical firms, multiple physician practices, Duke, Vanderbilt, and numerous private clinical organizations.

Steve Linder, PhD,  Professor, School of Public Health and Associate Director Institute for Health Policy

Dr. Linder is Associate Director of the Institute for Health Policy at the UTHSC School of Public Health and Professor, Division of Management, Policy and Community (primary); Division of Health Promotion & Behavioral Sciences (secondary). Dr. Linder has had an extensive career in public health, covering areas of policy, including environmental issues.

Dwight Brannon, Program Manager 

Dwight Brannon has over 15 years of experience managing self-funded medical plans and related benefits for school districts.  He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Education and Masters degrees in Educational Administration both from Lamar University.  The Risk Management expertise he has acquired and administration of plans has equipped him to consult and support the development, implementation and management of benefit programs and National Incident Management Systems Protocols.  

Fred Trotter, Senior Programmer

Fred Trotter is the leading consultant in Free/Libre and Open Source Health Software. Trotter has contributed code to FreeMed and OpenEMR. He was the project manager of MirrorMed and the original author of FreeB, the world’s first GPL medical billing engine. In 2004 Fred Trotter received the LinuxMedNews achievement award for work on FreeB. He manages the Open Source EHR review project with the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), Open Source Working Group (oswg). Fred is a member of WorldVistA. He has been published twice as an undergraduate. His educational backgrounds include a B.S in Computer Science, a B.A in psychology and a B.A in philosophy from Trinity University. Trotter minored in Business Administration, Cognitive Science, and Management Information Systems.