Dr. Varadraj Gurupur is currently employed with the Department of Health Management and Informatics at the University of Central Florida. He was previously employed with the School of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), Birmingham, Alabama as a Data Manager for their Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, and later as an Information Systems Specialist. During his tenure as the Data Manager he perceived that many areas of dementia treatment could be improved using software tools that can not only automate manual testing but also increase the accuracy of the results.
His main area of research is improving information systems for health and biomedical informatics. Dr. Gurupur has developed innovative prototypes that present new methodologies that can be used in the development of these information systems. He is currently in the process of developing innovative methodologies using concept maps that help in the improvement of information systems used in personal health informatics. The above mentioned transdisciplinary research applies the innovations in the area of software development towards building information systems for health care and medical research.
Additionally, he was involved in introducing systems that can predict student success in an individual program or course using artificial intelligence techniques. A tool coined as Artificial Intelligence-based Student Learning Evaluation tool (AISLE) was developed by his team. The main purpose of this tool is to improve the use of artificial intelligence techniques in evaluating a student’s understanding of a particular topic of study using concept maps. This tool was successfully tested to predict student success in passing the Registered Health Information Administrator (RHIA) test conducted by the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA).