Center for Decision Support Systems and Informatics
School of Global Health Management and Informatics
The Center for Decision Support Systems and Informatics synthesizes new algorithms, techniques, technologies, methodologies, and tools for advancing the decision support science while preparing the next generation of scientists who will specialize in this science. Founded by Varadraj P. Gurupur and Thomas T.H. Wan, the center aims to positively impact the Central Florida region by collaborating with local industry partners and contributing research outcomes to aid in decision support. As part of the School of Global Health Management and Informatics, the center puts technological resources at the fingertips of the next generation of leaders and information specialists in healthcare and informatics.
Core Objectives
- Synthesizing innovative algorithms, software tools, and technologies that can aid decision support to positively impact communities.
- Bolster innovations that facilitate transdisciplinary science related to decision support.
- Prepare the next generation of researchers in the aforementioned areas of research.
Tools and Resources
UCF Survey Resource Tool
This software tool enables automation of survey phone calls and allows the user to provide questions and possible answers for the recipient. Businesses can use it for customer satisfaction and employee surveys. The tool also provides a graphical summary of answers received.
Artificial Intelligence-Based Medical Information System
As part of a comprehensive Electronic Health Record system, this component focuses on assisting the ICD 10 coder in picking the correct ICD 10 CM and HCC codes using artificial intelligence and natural language processing. The system helps advance the science of developing Electronic Health Record systems using state-of-the-art algorithms in deciphering electronically captured physician observations.
Cardiovascular Readmission Decision Support System
This patented tool helps clinicians identify important factors that lead to patient readmission for cardiovascular diseases, assisting them in educating patients on ways to improve their health and wellness.
Meet Our Team
Center Director
Faculty
Collaborators
Projects & Publications

National I-Corps Teams: ChatMD
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation
Amount: $50,000
Period: 04/02/2026 – 03/30/2027
PI: Varadraj Gurupur
Co-Principal Investigators: Deepa Fernandes Prabhu, Alexa Stone, and Elizabeth Trader

De-Biasing AI Data for Health Disparity Analyses and Training
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation
Amount: $10,000
Award Number: #1550305 and 1916589
PI: Bert Little, PhD
Co-I: Giang Vu (Contribution: $829.00)

Dental Public Health Residency Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Funding Agency: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Amount: $35,000
PI: Giang Vu, PhD
Project period: July 2023 – June 2025

Augmenting Healthcare Professionals’ Training, Expertise Development, and Diagnostic Reasoning with AI-based Immersive Technologies in Telehealth
Purpose: Design an intelligent collaborative virtual telehealth system prototype that supports medical professionals’ diagnostic reasoning, expertise development, and training to be integrated into current medical education curricula that can be used in various healthcare scenarios.
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation
Amount in total: $150,000, Contribution: 20% credit split
Project period: January 2022 – December 2022
PI: Roger Azevedo
Co-PIs: Mark Neider, Mindy Shoss, Dario Torre, Varadraj Gurupur

Florida Blue Foundation Food Security Grant
Project period: 2/1/2022-1/31/2025
Screen and Intervene: Connecting Food Insecure Patients to Resources
PI: Second Harvest Food of Central Florida
Award: $300,000 (10% indirect costs). Christian King Contribution: $4,500
Role: Co-Investigator (co-I: Hou, Bernhardt, Alliance for Community Health )

Changes in the Delivery of Evidenced Based Psychotherapies for Depression and PTSD as the Result of COVID-19 Pandemic

Translational Community Health at Harmony on Lake Eloise: Phase I Scope

Evaluating the Impact of Web-Based Artistic Toolkit on Caregiving Burden for Dementia

I-Corps Data Completeness and Data Inconsistency in Healthcare Data

Analyzing Data Completeness and Inconsistency to Reduce Misdiagnosis and Mitigate Reimbursement Errors

Decision Support System Extracting the ICD 10 Coding Semantics
Vu, G.T., Chandra, A., Salvi, S., King, C., Gurupur, V. (2026). Predicting Delayed Dental Care Using Machine Learning: A National Health Interview Survey Analysis, International Dental Journal, Vol. 76(2), 10947. DOI: 10.1016/j.identj.2026.109407. Journal Impact Factor: 3.7.
Gurupur, V., Hooshmand, S., Prabhu, D.F., Trader, E., Salvi, S. (2025). Incompleteness of Electronic Health Records: An Impending Process Problem within Healthcare, Healthcare, 2900, DOI: 10.3390/healthcare13222900. Journal Impact Factor: 2.7.
Mayya, V., Vu, G.T., Mandhidi, B., King, C., Gurupur, V., Little, B.B., Singhal, A. (2025). EAT: Explainable Attentive Transformers for Identifying the Factors Influencing Dental Visits to Enhance Dental Data Completeness, BMC Oral Health, DOI: 10.1186/s12903-025-07170-0. Journal Impact Factor: 3.1.
Vu, G.T., Mayya, V., Mandhidi, B., King, C., Little, B.B., Gurupur, V., Singhal, A. (2025). Application of Machine Learning to Predict Periodontal Disease in US Adults: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of NHANES 2009–2014, Health Informatics Journal, Vol. 31(4), pp.1–21, DOI: 0.1177/14604582251394617. Journal Impact Factor: 2.3.
Prabhu, D.F., Gurupur, V., Stone, A., Trader, E. (2025). Integrating Artificial Intelligence, Electronic Health Records, and Wearables for Predictive, Patient-Centered Decision Support in Healthcare, Healthcare, Vol. 13(21), 2753, DOI: 10.3390/healthcare13212753. Journal Impact Factor: 2.7.
Salvi, S., Vu, G., Gurupur, V., King, C., (2025). Classifying Tooth Loss and Assessing Risk Factors in US Adults: A Machine Learning Analysis of BRFSS 2022 Data, Electronics, Vol. 14(17), 3559, DOI: 10.3390/electronics14173559. Journal Impact Factor: 2.6.
Salvi, S., Garg, L., Gurupur, V. (2025). Stage-Wise IoT Solutions for Alzheimer’s Disease: A Systematic Review of Detection, Monitoring, and Assistive Technologies, Sensors, Vol. 25 (17), pp. J5252. DOI: 10.3390/s25175252, Journal Impact Factor: 3.5.
Salvi, S., Vu, G., Gurupur, V., King, C., (2025). Digital Convergence in Dental Informatics: A Structured Narrative Review of Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Digital Twins, and Large Language Models with Security, Privacy, and Ethical Perspectives, Electronics, 14(16), 3278; DOI:10.3390/electronics14163278. Journal Impact Factor: 2.6.
Trader, E., Gurupur, V. (2025). Real-Time Tracking of Diagnostic Discrepancies in Electronic Health Records for Improved Predictive Modeling, IEEE Access, DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2025.3573931. Journal Impact Factor: 3.4.
Sikka, V., Saifman, S., King, C., Klinker, S., Mont, T., & Castiglioni, A. (2024). Integrating tele-urgent care in undergraduate medical education: a partnership between the US Department of Veterans Affairs and academia. Education for Health, 37(3), 218-224.
Shang, D., Williams, C., Vu, G., *Joshi, A. (2024). Teeth, Health, and Mind: Understanding the Interplay of Social Determinants and Cognitive Decline in Older Adults. Journal of Applied Gerontology. (Impact Factor: 2.144. Official journal of the Southern Gerontological Society)
Vu, G.T., King, C. (2024). Food insecurity and periodontitis in US adults. Community Dental Health. (Impact Factor: 1.349. Official journal of the British Association for the Study of Community Dentistry and the European Association of Dental Public Health).
Shanbhag, S.*, Raju, S., Gurupur, V., Kamath, S.S., Kandala, R.N.V.P.S., Trader, E.A.*, Lal, S. (2024). Analyzing Data Incompleteness for MRI Data for Quality Enhancement, IEEE Access, DOI: 0.1109/ACCESS.2024.3511384. Journal Impact Factor: 3.4.
Gurupur, V., Vu, G.T., Mayya, V., King, C. (2024). The Need for Standards in Evaluating the Quality of Electronic Health Records and Dental Records: A Narrative Review, Big Data and Cognitive Computing, DOI: 10.3390/bdcc8120168. Journal Impact Factor: 3.7.
Mayya, V., King, C., Vu, G.T., Gurupur, V. (2024). Empirical Study of Feature Selection Methods in Regression for Large-Scale Healthcare Data: A Case Study on
Estimating Dental Expenditures, IEEE Access, Vol. 12, pp. 153564-153579, DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3482192. Journal Impact Factor: 3.4.
Mayya, V., Kandala, R.N.V.P.S., Gurupur, V., King, C., Vu, G., Wan, T.T.H. (2024). Need for an Artificial Intelligence-based Diabetes Care Management System in India and the United States, Health Services Research & Managerial Epidemiology, Vol 11, 1-12, DOI:10.1177/23333928241275292 Journal Impact Factor: 1.5.
Warren, N.A., Maskin, N.L., Gurupur, V., Rector, D.A., Adelman, D., Howell, S., McAree, J., Dibble, R., Carlisano, C., Maconi, D.P., Schrotenboer, D., James, M., Marte, N., Carlisano, T., Toland, C., Chung, J., Cremers, S.L., Corbin, G.S. (2024). Engaging Stakeholders to Develop a Roadmap for Dry Eye and MGD PCORI-Funded Research, Patient Related Outcome Measures, 2024:15 143–186. DOI: 10.2147/PROM.S438290. Journal Impact Factor: 2.1.
Vu, G.T., Shakib, S., King, C., Gurupur, V., Little, B.B. (2023). Association between uncontrolled diabetes and periodontal disease in US adults: NHANES 2009-2014, Scientific Reports, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-43827-y. Journal Impact Factor: 3.8.
Gireesh, E., Gurupur, V. (2023). Informational entropy measures for evaluation of reliability of deep neural network results, Entropy, Vol. 25(4) 573. DOI: 3390/e25040573.
Decker, V., King, C., Cassisi, J., & Tofthagen, C. (2023). Usability and Acceptability of a Videoconference Program for the Treatment of Depression in Adults With Peripheral Neuropathy. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 10-1097. DOI: 10.1097/CIN.0000000000001008
King, C., and Huang, X. (2023). Neighborhood Violence and Housing Instability: An Exploratory Study of Low-Income Women. Housing Studies. DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2022.2074970
Gurupur, V., Hooshmand, S., Abedin, P., Shelleh, M. (2022). Analyzing the Data Completeness of Patients’ Records Using a Random Variable Approach to Predict the Incompleteness of Electronic Health Records, Applied Sciences, DOI: 2076-3417/12/21/10746.
Gurupur, V. (2022). Can the theories of information and communication channels be used to explain the complexities associated with transformation of data into information, and information to knowledge? Journal of Integrated Design and Process Science, DOI: 10.3233/JID-220010.
Gireesh, E. D., Skinner, H., Seo, J.H., Chen, P-C., Lee, K., Gurupur, V. (2022). Deep neural networks and gradient-weighted class activation mapping to classify and analyse EEG, Intelligent Decision Technologies, Vol. 17(1), pp. 43-53.
Gurupur, V. (2022). Key Observations in terms of Management of Electronic Health Records from a mHealth Perspective, mHealth, DOI: 10.21037/mhealth-21-39.
Li, Y, Li, D. and King, C. (2022). Food Insufficiency among Job-Loss Households during the Pandemic: The Role of Food Assistance Programs. Sustainability, 14(22), 15433. doi.org/10.3390/su142215433
Sikka, V., King, C., Klinker, S., Mont, T., Sommers-Olson, B., Hunt, B. E., Davis, S., and Fonseca, J. (2022). Telemedicine for Veterans in the Setting of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons Learned from a Virtual Urgent Care. Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare. doi.org/10.1177/1357633X211069018
Bernhardt, C., and King, C. (2022). Neighborhood disadvantage and prescription drug misuse in low-income urban mothers. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 231, 109245. doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2021.109245
King, C., Huang, X., and Dewan, N. (2022) Continuity and change in neighborhood disadvantage and adolescent depression and anxiety. Health & Place, 73, 102724. doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2021.102724
King, C., and Mancao, H., J. (2022). Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children Participation and Unmet Health Care Needs among Young Children. Child: Care, Health and Development. doi.org/10.1111/cch.12959
Bernhardt, C., and King, C. (2022). Telehealth and food insecurity screenings: challenges and lessons learned. mHealth, 8, 10. doi:10.21037/mhealth-21-31
Ramirez Garcia, N., Garcia Sierra, A., M., King, C., Valbuena, A., M., Urina-Triana, M., Quintero Baiz, A. & Acuña, A. (2022). Regional variability of glycemic control among adults with diabetes mellitus in Colombia. Public Health of Mexico, 64(2), 233-235. doi.org/10.21149/13053
Bernhardt, C., Hou, S-I, King, C., and Miller, A. (2022). Identifying barriers to effective patient-provider communication about food insecurity screenings in outpatient clinical settings in Central Florida: A mixed-methods study. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, 28(2), E595-E602. doi.org/10.1097/PHH.0000000000001449
Gurupur, V., Miao, Z. (2021). A Brief Analysis of Challenges in implementing Telehealth in a Rural Setting, mHealth, DOI: 21037/mhealth-21-38.
Kulkarni, S.A., Gurupur, V., King, C., Koval, A. (2021). Impact of Gaussian Noise for Optimized Support Vector Machine Algorithm Applied to Medicare Payment on Raspberry Pi, Informatica, Vol. 12(2), pp. 57 – 75.
Gurupur, V., Shelleh, M.(2021). Machine Learning Analysis for Data Incompleteness (MADI): Analyzing the Data Completeness of Patient Records Using a Random Variable Approach to Predict the Incompleteness of Electronic Health Records, IEEE Access, Vol. 9, pp. 95994-96001. DOI: 1109/ACCESS.2021.3095240.
Gurupur, V. (2021). A Review on Advances in Design and Development of Complex Adaptive Systems for Healthcare Using Concept Maps, Health Technology, 5(2021), pp. 1-6. DOI: 10.21037/ht-21-12.
Wan, T.T.H., Gurupur, V., Wang, B.L., Mathews, S. (2021). A Patient-Centric Care Approach to Facilitate the Design of an Artificial Intelligence Application in Geriatric Care Management of Heart Failure Readmissions, Biomedical Research and Clinical Reviews, DOI: 10.31579/2692-9406/056.
Kulkarni, S.A., Pannu, J.S.*, Koval, A.V., Merrin, G.J., Gurupur, V., Nasir, A., King, C., Wan, T.T.H. (2021). A Brief Analysis of Key Machine Learning Methods for Predicting Medicare Payments Related to Physical Therapy Practices in the United States, Information, Vol 12(2), 57. https://doi.org/10.3390/info12020057.
Wan, T.T.H., Gurupur, V. (2020). Understanding the Difference between Healthcare Informatics and Healthcare Data Analytics in the Present State of Health Care Management, Health Services Research & Managerial Epidemiology, 7, pp. 1-3.
Gurupur, V., Wan, T.T.H. (2020). Inherent Bias in Artificial Intelligence-Based Decision Support Systems for Healthcare, Medicina, 2020 56(3), 141.
McAtee, J. R., Tao, M. H., King, C., & Chai, W. (2020). Association of Home Food Availability with Prediabetes and Diabetes among Adults in the United States. Nutrients, 12(5), 1209. doi.org/10.3390/nu12051209
King, C. and Liu, X. (2020). Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Opioid Use among US Adults with Back Pain. Spine, 45(15), 1062-1066. DOI: 10.1097/BRS.0000000000003466
King, C., and Khanijahani, A. (2020). Unmet Health Care Needs among Children of Mothers Exposed to Violence. Child Abuse & Neglect. doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2020.104363
Asha C.S., Lal, S., Gurupur, V., Saxena, P.U. (2019). Multimodal Medical Image Fusion with Adaptive Weighted Combination of NSST Bands using Chaotic Grey Wolf Optimization, IEEE Access, DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2908076.
Srinivasagopalan, S., Barry, J., Gurupur, V., Thankachan, S.V. (2019). A Deep Learning Approach for Diagnosing Schizophrenic Patients, Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, DOI: 1080/0952813X.2018.1563636.
Raffenaud, A., Gurupur, V., Fernandes, S.L., Yeung, T. (2019). Utilizing Telemedicine in Oncology Settings: Patient Favourability Rates and Perceptions of use Analysis Using Chi-Square and Neural Networks, Technology and Health Care, DOI: 3233/THC-181293.
Steis, M., Unruh, L., Gurupur, V., Shettian, E., Rowe, M., Golden, A. (2019). Family caregivers faced with new acute symptoms: What to do?, American Journal of Nursing, Vol. 119(3), pp. 22-29.
Wan, T.T.H., Gurupur, V., Patel, A. (2019). A Longitudinal Analysis of Total Pain Scores for a Panel of Patients Treated by Pain Clinics, Health Services Research & Managerial Epidemiology, Vol. 6:1-7, DOI: 10.1177/2333392818788420.
McAtee, J., King, C., and Chai, W. (2019). Food Insecurity is Inversely Associated with Healthy Food Availability among Adults in the United States. Diabesity, 5(1), 17-22. DOI:10.15562/diabesity.2019.XX17
Gurupur, V., Kulkarni, S.A., Liu, X., Desai, U., Nasir, A*. (2018). Analysing the Power of Deep Learning Techniques Over the Traditional Methods Using Medicare Utilization and Provider Data, Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, 31(1), pp. 99 -115.
Trader, E., Jayaraman, A., Luong, T., Gurupur, V. (2024). Legal AI for Tracking of Diagnostic Discrepancy Data for Predictive Modeling, Proceedings of SDPS 2024 Conference, October 6-9, 2024, Bologna, Italy, In Press.
Trader, E., Joshi, A., Gurupur, V., Vu, G. (2024). Facial Tilt Detection and Correction in Panoramic X-rays Using Depth Maps from 2D Stereo Images: A Novel Approach to Minimize Positioning Errors in Dental Imaging, Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Biomedical Engineering & Sciences, July 22 – 25, 2024, Las Vegas, NV, In Press.
Trader, E., Joshi, A., Gurupur, V. (2024). Landmark Facial Feature Detection to Reduce Positioning Error in Panoramic X-Rays, Proceedings of the 24th Annual IEEE International Conference on Electro Information Technology (eit2024), May 30 – June 1, 2024, Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
Trader, E., Gurupur, V. (2024). Real-Time Tracking of Misdiagnosis in Electronic
Health Records for Improved Predictive Modeling, Proceedings of the IEEE SoutheastCon 2024, March 21 – 24, 2024, Atlanta, GA. DOI: 10.1109/SoutheastCon52093.2024.10500025.
Gurupur, V., Shelleh, M., Leone, C., Schupp-Omid, D., Azevedo, R., Dubey, S. (2023). THNN – A Neural Network Model for Telehealth Data Incompleteness Prediction, Proceedings of the 44th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC’23), July 24 – 28, 2023, Sydney, Australia. DOI: 10.1109/EMBC40787.2023.10340989.
Gurupur, V., Shelleh, M., Leone, C., Schupp-Omid, D., Azevedo, R., Dubey, S. (2023). THNN – A Neural Network Model for Telehealth Data Incompleteness Prediction, Proceedings of the 44th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC’23), July 24 – 28, 2023, Sydney, Australia. In Press
Shelleh, M., and Gurupur, V. (2022). PC-LSTM: Ontology-based Long Short-Term Memory State Model for Data Incompleteness Prediction, Proceedings of the 44th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC’22), July 11 – 15, 2022, Glasgow, UK.
Kulkarni, S.A., Gurupur, V., King. C. (2022). Impact Analysis of Stacked Machine Learning Algorithms Based Feature Selections for Deep Learning Algorithm Applied to Regression Analysis, Proceedings of the IEEE Southeast Conference 2022, March 31 – April 3, Mobile, AL.
Kulkarni, S. A., Gurupur, V., and King, C. (2021). Time Series Data Modelling of COVID-19 Positive Data applying popular Ensemble and Deep Learning Algorithm, 43rd IEEE International Conference of Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), November 1-5, 2021, EMBS Virtual Conference, USA
Renduchintala, C., Gurupur, V., Wan, T.T.H. (2020). Data Architecture for Motivation Measurement in a Game-based Rehabilitation System, Proceedings of the IEEE Southeast Conference 2020, March 12 -15, Raleigh, NC.
Kulkarni, S.A., Gurupur, V. (2019). A Case study for Comparing the Difference Between Logistic Regression and K-Nearest Neighbour Using Raspberry Pi for the Purpose of Machine Learning, Proceedings of SDPS 2019 Conference, July 28 – August 1, 2019, Taichung, Taiwan.
Nasir, A., Gurupur, V., Mumtaz, S.U., (2020). Method and System for Managing Chronic Illness Health Care Records, US 11,887,707 B2, Date Awarded: January 30, 2024.
Wan, T.T.H., Gurupur, V., (2021). Identifying the Significance of Patient-Centric Factors Leading to Risk Reduction for Hospital Readmission of Heart Failure, Patent No: US 11,017,903 B2, Date Awarded: May 25, 2021
Gurupur, V., Nasir, A., Liu, X., (2020). Method and system for managing health care patient record data, US 10,790,049 B2, Date Awarded: September 29, 2020.
Contact Us
informaticslab@ucf.edu
(407) 823-5161
Teaching Academy 403D
University of Central Florida
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