About myCHOIS

The Maternity & Childhood Obesity Informatics System (myCHOIS), which was developed by Dr. Datta's team through a collaborative effort of the National University Community Research Institute (NUCRI) with National and International Centers & Institutes and with the support of the Illinois Department of Human Services (DHS), is primarily for obesity surveillance & control. Obesity among youth is a national crisis in US. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that the Body Mass Index (BMI) should be measured on all youth as part of normal health supervision. BMI, which is easy to measure and correlates with body fat, assesses the weight status of an individual to identify those at risk and obese. Nevertheless, Mother's health before and during pregnancy is equally important for babies. New research has shown that the risk of newborn heart defects increases with increasing Maternal Obesity. myCHOIS also provides relevant information on obesity and related (particularly on diabetes) through this web interface. This web based system is available free for use to any non-profit organization under collaboration.

The Childhood Obesity Informatics System (CHOIS) was earlier tested in Illinois to identify obese and at-risk children for intervention Program with proper diet (see USDA) and physical activity. In the process, the School Nurse collects the data on the students' physical condition including the height and weight, enters into this web based system, and submits to save in a MySQL relational database system. Automatic computation of BMI, BMI percentile and the risk of obesity alert are embedded into this system. This HIPAA & FERPA compliant secure EHR system, developed using open source & grid-enabled technologies integrating large databases in a high performance computing environment (XSEDE), enables school-nurse and healthcare service providers to collect data on children and report statistical and surveillance information on BMI. A mobile version of CHOIS, termed mCHOIS, has recently been developed for using the system in the field/point-of-care.

Although the role of proper nutrition and weight control are realized to be the important factors to control obesity, the role of genetic factors could not be ruled out. Recent evidence has shown that even microbial genetic factors (see Human Microbiome Project) may have a significant role. Nevertheless, Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) has identified about a dozen of genes associated with obesity including the association of FTO gene (chromosomal locus: 16q12.2). No wonder why obesity is associated with multiple other disease conditions. Overweight and obese people are at an increased risk for developing a variety of diseases (see CDC), such as, Type 2 (non-insulin dependent) diabetes, Cardiovascular disease, stroke, hypertension, to name a few.

The impact of such information of an individual on medical care could potentially be substantial. Modern medicine is laying the groundwork for the era of personalized medicine, in which the current one size-fits-all approach to medical care will give way to more customized strategies. In the future, health professionals will be able to provide patients with individualized information about their risks of developing certain diseases. The information will also enable health professionals to tailor prevention programs to each person's unique health profile. In addition, if a patient does become ill, the information can be used to select the treatments most likely to be effective and least likely to cause adverse reactions in that particular patient. myCHOIS has been designed to provide such information to the physicians, allied health professionals and patients through role based accessible secured system. Its web interface also enables to upload the laboratory test results from anywhere that can finally be analyzed for various purposes including that for personalized medicine. read more>>