Rama Appala Narasimha Reddy Challa

• University at Buffalo, the State University of New York – MS, Biomedical Informatics

Bio

Ram Challa (he/him/his) joined DFMCH in 2025 as a research specialist focusing on clinical research and biomedical informatics. Challa’s work emphasizes patient-centered approaches in primary care, supporting randomized controlled trials, and advancing data-driven insights into treatment outcomes.

Research Interests

Challa’s research focuses on bridging clinical practice, patient-reported outcomes, and informatics to support evidence-based care. He aims to advance family medicine research through rigorous clinical trials, robust data analytics, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Challa’s research interests include:

• Patient-centered approaches to managing acute rhinosinusitis in primary care
• Managing ana analyzing clinical and patient-reported data using SQL, R, SAS, Python, REDCap, and EPIC to ensure high-quality, reproducible research
• Pro-environmental behaviors within group medical visit settings
• Biomedical ontology development to improve data interoperability and integration across health research systems
• Exploring the impact of digital health literacy and infodemiology on treatment adherence and patient engagement in health care research

Publications and Presentations

• Beverley J, Babcock S, Benson C, De Colle G, Cohen S, Diehl AD, Challa RANR, Mavrovic RA, Billig J, Huffman A, He Y. A fourfold pathogen reference ontology suite. J Biomed Semantics. In press.
• Milivinti E, Wilson F, Duncan WD, McNeil DW, Challa RANR, Ensz OS, Heaton B, Singhal A, Cooper M, Yu J, Sardzinski E, Diehl AD. Integrating multi-survey data into an ontological model of dental fear and anxiety. Ontologies for Services and Social-good (OSS) Workshops at FOIS 2025; Catania, Italy. Submitted.
• Duncan WD, Diehl AD, Challa RANR, Ensz OS, Singhal A, Heaton B, McNeil DW. The ontology of dental fear and anxiety. Presented at: American Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research (AADOCR) Annual Meeting; March 11, 2025; Chicago, IL.
• Challa RANR, Resnick MP, Schwartz DG. Effect of cyberchondria and infodemiology on patient compliance: a narrative review. Health Sci Rep. Submitted.
• Ashwin JV, Singh A, Shahi MK, Singh B, Challa RANR. Prevalence of bruxism in neurodegenerative disorders in the elderly: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Ind Psychiatry J. 2025; doi:10.4103/ipj.ipj_152_24.