Departments Overview
IT Departments at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School
The Information Technology (IT) department at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School is composed of six main sub-departments – Academic Technology, Data Sciences & Technology, Customer Services, Engineering, Infrastructure Services and IT Security. Although each of the sub-departments have their own projects and focuses they all work together in order to accomplish the ultimate goal of serving the customers and partners in the most proficient, efficient and innovative way.
Academic Technology
Our mission is to advance medical education through delivery of student information systems, teaching and learning technologies, and innovative instructional design. The Academic Technology department includes technology integration and support for:
- Classroom polling and engagement technologies
- Curriculum Management
- Digital exams and educational assessment technologies
- Educational authoring applications
- Instructional Design
- Learning Management Systems
- Lecture Capture
- Student Information Services
- Teaching & Learning Technologies
- Video platform systems
Our team works directly with students, faculty, and administrators from all three UMass Chan schools to meet current and future academic technology challenges.
Customer Services
Includes three service areas:
- Help Desk
- Productivity Services
- Communication Technologies
The Help Desk strives to provide a professional, courteous experience to anyone in need of IT services. Responsibilities include accepting calls, logging calls into a call tracking application, analyzing and triaging calls in order to provide solutions in a timely, efficient manner. The Help Desk also ensures the University is in compliance with the distribution and maintenance of application software. Productivity services provide desktop hardware and software support which includes PC repairs, software installation, distribution and updates. Communication Technologies maintains the audio visual aspect (projectors, microphones, AV software, multi-media and graphic arts) of over 126 conference rooms, cell phones and land lines processes, voice mails and conference bridges and the UMass Chan Medical School phone operators.
Engineering
Engineering department provides application and web development in the support of business operations and provides consulting services to research and academic areas. Engineering develops and implements software solutions designed to meet the needs of the institution and its investment in technology. Some of the services the engineering department offers are:
- Business system analysis, application design, development, implementation and support
- Software distribution and maintenance
- Web-enabled solutions, product architecture design & standards
- Database design & administration
- Integration services
- Quality assurance
- Web site development, hosting, seo and visual communications
- Vendor management and technology evaluation, and third party application acquisition
In UMass Chan Medical School IT, we have taken on the Agile/Scrum framework. We have created teams that are dedicated to specific customer groups, who focus on their needs in short iterative delivery timeframes and who extend their team to the customers they serve.
Infrastructure Services
Offers user-focused services in a robust, sustainable enterprise delivery model, including: email, remote networking, wireless networking, list server, spam and virus protection, training and education. The department manages and supports the technical infrastructure of the Medical School users as well as support for President’s office information technology group (UITS), ForHealth Consulting and its customers. Infrastructure services department is comprised of three service areas:
- Hosted Systems supports server management, E-mail services, file and print services and high performance computing support.
- Network Engineering provides data network management, wireless networking, internet/intranet services and remote access.
- Telecommunication Infrastructure provides cable plant infrastructure support, technical management (installation, support and maintenance) of telephone and voicemail systems and call centers.
Information Technology Security
Works to ensure everyone at UMass Chan Medical School understands their role and responsibility to protect the school’s information and computer environment. Department strategy includes threat management, security incident response, training & awareness, risk assessments and security consulting services. The IT security department provides policies and standards that work as well as meaningful guidance focused on hot security topics and forward looking technologies (such as mobile security, collaboration and cloud computing).
Research Technology
Research Technology supports basic and clinical research at the school by providing bioinformatics and biostatistics support and maintaining a variety of hardware and software applications. The group is focused on how to boost productivity in the labs by adding storage, improve networking speeds and access, and implement data management software such as LIMS and ELNs. RCS is also working on several clinical informatics tools - Clinical Data Repository, Clinical Trial Management System and Biorepository. Research Technology has over 10 years’ experience in providing High Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC) services and recently we expanded our operations to the five UMASS campuses through the management of UMASS side of the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Cluster (MGHPCC).