Justin B. Starren, MD, PhD, FACMI

Justin Starren, M.D., Ph.D., FACMI, recently joined Northwestern University as Director of the Northwestern University Biomedical Research Center (NUBIC), at the Feinberg School of Medicine. He is also Chief of the newly-formed Division of Biomedical Informatics in the Department of Preventive Medicine, and remains an Adjunct Associate Professor of Clinical Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University.

From 2006 to 2010 Dr. Starren was the first director of the Biomedical Informatics Research Center at Marshfield Clinic. At Marshfield he grew the informatics research activity four-fold, and founded the Interactive Clinical Design Institute. He also designed the informatics infrastructure for the Wisconsin Genomics Initiative.

Dr. Starren began his informatics career at Columbia University, starting as the first doctoral student in biomedical informatics and becoming an Associate Professor of Clinical Biomedical Informatics. At Columbia, he directed the technology components of the IDEATel project, an 8-year, $60 million project, to evaluate the role of home telehealth in the management of Medicare patients with diabetes.

Dr. Starren has been active in AMIA leadership throughout his career. He has been active in AMIA nearly all of his professional life, starting in 1993 as a Session Chair in the Fall Symposium. Some in AMIA have referred him as the "money guy", because he joined the Finance Committee in 1996, becoming Finance Committee Chair in 1998 and AMIA Treasurer from 2004-2007. In those positions he guided AMIA in the development of a reserve fund, creation of a strategic investment policy, selection an external auditor and in dealing with Sarbanes-Oxley. As AMIA Treasurer, he also championed the restructuring of AMIA which created the salaried President position (held first by Don Detmer and now by Ted Shortliffe). That change has led to a significant growth in AMIA revenue, activity and span of influence. He has also served on various AMIA taskforces, most recently the Clinical Research Informatics Taskforce, which resulted in the new Clinical Research Informatics Summit meeting. In 2009 he was elected to the AMIA Board of Directors.

He has received many awards including being named one of the Top 10 IT Innovators by Healthcare Informatics Magazine. He earned a bachelor's degree in biology from Washington University, St. Louis; a combined medical degree and master's degree in immunogenetics from Washington University School of Medicine and Ph.D. in medical informatics at Columbia University. He is a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and has served on the Wisconsin eHealth Care Quality and Patient Safety Board.