Thankam Paul Thyvalikakath

Biography

Dr. Thyvalikakath is Director of the new Dental Informatics Core Initiative at the Indiana University School of Dentistry. As core director, she is creating a program designed to pursue the School's missions with research, teaching, information technology services and clinical care. The core's primary objective is to enhance patient care through improved data capture and documentation and phenotyping of electronic health records data. Previously, she was faculty at the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine since 2006. During her tenure there, she held secondary appointments in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and Clinical and Translational Science Institute at the School of Medicine. Dr. Thyvalikakath earned her PhD degree in Biomedical Informatics in 2012 from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She also holds a dental degree and certificate in clinical research from the University of Pittsburgh as well as a dental degree from the University of Kerala, India and a Master's degree in Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery form the University of Calicut, India. Dr. Thyvalikakath has served as Principal Investigator, co-investigator or consultant on National Institute of Health grants. She received two career development awards from the National Institutes of Health (KL2RR024154 from the NCRR through the University of Pittsburgh CTSI and 5K08DE018957 from the NIDCR) that applied cognitive engineering methods to improve electronic dental records interface and evaluated a risk assessment tool for periodontal disease. These projects established foundational knowledge on applying user-centered design and cognitive engineering methods to design and evaluate clinical systems in dentistry.

Research Interest

Dr. Thyvalikakath is a clinician and an informatics researcher. In addition to her directorship, she teaches predoctoral students in her capacity as an Associate Professor in the School's Restorative Dentistry Department. She is an active member of the American Association of Dental Research, American Dental Association, American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) and American Dental Education Association (ADEA). She is the Chair for Dental Informatics Section at ADEA (2013-14); co-chair for Dental Informatics Work Group, AMIA (2013-14); Scientific Program Committee member and CDE planner for the 2014 Annual meeting of AMIA.