Salvatore Volpe, MD, PC Rewarded for Quality Efforts
 Salvatore Volpe, MD, PC (Staten Island, New York) has been named as a recipient of this year’s “Quality Award.” The Quality Awards, given annually by IPRO, New York State’s Medicare Quality Improvement Organization, recognize health care providers demonstrating a commitment to improving health care services in the state.
“Recognition by IPRO is a true honor. I have benefited from the guidance and support of Dr Alan Silver and Suzanne Columbus and look forward to continued work with IPRO as we continue to promote Health Information Technology as means to improve the quality of care for patients.” Dr Salvatore Volpe
Salvatore Volpe, MD, FAAP, FACP, CHCQM has 17 years of a primary care practice experience. He is one of the few physicians in the country to have successfully become board certified in Pediatrics, Internal medicine, Geriatrics and Quality Assurance. Visit www.svolpemd.com for more information.
Danny Sands was interviewed in the latest HIStalk blog on Health IT
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Paul Tang, MD, Chairman, AMIA Board of Directors, Appointed to the Google Health Advisory Council
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New Partnership Expands Scope of Online Nursing Community
An innovative and highly successful worldwide online community of practice - The Global Alliance for Nursing and Midwifery Electronic Community of Practice (GANM CoP) - has received funding that will broaden and enhance efforts to deliver connectivity and best practices to nurses and midwives worldwide. GANM Director and JHUSON Assistant Professor Patricia Abbott, PhD, RN, FAAN will lead the GANM expansion.
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AMIA Board Member, Leslie A. Lenert Appointed as Director of CDC's National Center for Public Health Informatics (NCPHI)
The American Medical Informatics Association and the American College of Medical Informatics congratulate Leslie A. Lenert, MD, MS on his recent appointment as Director of CDC's National Center for Public Health Informatics (NCPHI) in the Coordinating Center for Health Information and Service (CCHIS).
The CDC has made a superb choice. Dr. Lenert's leadership abilities combined with his commitments to transform health care through the use of information technology and informatics, position him to be the ideal leader for NCPHI. We commend the search committee, under the leadership of Dr. Charles Safran, for this highly successful appointment.
Dr. Lenert will enjoy our full commitment in his new role with the CDC and we intend to work closely with him to support public health informatics nationally as well as within AMIA itself.
Please join us in applauding and congratulating Dr. Lenert on this wonderful success and outstanding achievement.
Don E. Detmer, MD, MA; Paul C. Tang, MD, MS; Daniel Masys, MD, PhD on behalf of AMIA's Board and the Executive Committee of ACMI
Read the complete CDC/NCPHI press release at: http://www.cdc.gov/ncphi/
AMIA Member and ACMI Fellow Joshua Lederberg receives Presidential Medal of Freedom
 Dr. Joshua Lederberg, PhD, FACMI is one of 10 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civil award, President George W. Bush announced today.
Established by Executive Order 11085 in 1963, the Medal may be awarded by the President “to any person who has made an especially meritorious contribution to (1) the security or national interests of the United States, or (2) world peace, or (3) cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” President Bush will honor Lederberg and the other recipients at a White House ceremony on Friday, December 15, 2006.
Throughout his career, Lederberg has taken important advisory roles in government, serving as scientific counselor to world leaders on issues ranging from cancer and emerging infectious diseases to space exploration and biological weapons disarmament. He was co-chairman of the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology and Government; chairman of the Congressional Technology Assessment Advisory Council; and chairman of the New York Academy of Sciences. He also has been a member of the U.S. Defense Science Board and a director of the Council on Foreign Relations.
In addition to the Nobel Prize and the Medal of Freedom, Lederberg has received numerous awards, including the 1989 National Medal of Science.
Read the complete White House Press Release
Read the complete Rockefeller University Newswire Release
AMIA and The American College of Medical Informatics Congratulate Dr. Lederberg on this prestigious honor.
AMIA congratulates all 2006 AMIA Symposium Student Paper Competition Award Winners.
The Scientific Program Committee (SPC) and Student Paper Advisory Committee (SPAC) selects the winners for each award annually.
First Place and Martin Epstein Award Winner: Gil Alterovitz
Discovering Biological Guilds Through Topological Abstraction
G. Alterovitz, M.F Ramoni Harvard/MIT Division of Health Science and Technology, CHIP, HPCGG, Boston, MA;
Second Place Winner: Adam Wright
Automated Development of Order Sets and Corollary Orders by Data Mining in an Ambulatory Computerized Physician Order Entry System
A. Wright, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR; and D. F. Sittig, Northwest Permanente Medical Group, Portland, OR
Third Place Winner: Christopher Johnson
Task Analysis of Writing Hospital Admission Orders: Evidence of a Problem-Based Approach
C. D. Johnson, R. F. Zeiger, A. K. Das, Stanford Biomedical Informatics, Stanford, CA; and M. K. Goldstein, VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Palo Alto, CA
Congratulations to all Student Paper Competition Finalists:
Noah Benson
A Markov Model Approach To Predicting Regional Tumor Spread in the Lymphatic System Of the Head and Neck
N. C. Benson, M. Whipple, and I. J. Kalet, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Jeff Friedlin
A Natural Language Processing System To Extract and Code Concepts Relating To Congestive Heart Failure From Chest Radiology Reports
J. Friedlin, and C. J. McDonald, Regenstrief Institute, Indianapolis, IN
Nathan Hoot
An Early Warning System for Overcrowding in the Emergency Department
N. Hoot, and D. Aronsky, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN
William Hsu
A Framework for Visually Querying a Probabilistic Model of Tumor Image Features
W. Hsu, Los Angeles, CA
David Sanders
Detecting Asthma Exacerbations in a Pediatric Emergency Department Using a Bayesian Network
D. L. Sanders, and D. Aronsky, Vanderbilt University Department of Biomedical Informatics, Nashville, TN
Visit the AMIA Web site to view photographs from the AMIA 2006 Closing session at which these awards and others were presented.
AMIA Member Nancy K. Roderer, BS, MLS, ACMI, has recently been elected President-elect, American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST). Ms Roderer will assume office at the ASIST annual meeting in Austin, Texas in November 2006. She is an Associate Professor in the Division of Health Sciences Informatics (DHSI) of Johns Hopkins University and serves as the Director of the Welch Medical Library and Director of DHSI. She has pursued her interests in understanding and facilitating information use and in integrated information management through both operational and research activities at Columbia, Yale and Johns Hopkins Universities. She teaches in the areas of library and information science and health sciences informatics, and is currently Co-Director of a National Library of Medicine-funded post-doctoral training program in informatics. Her recent research efforts address issues related to providing human support to users interacting with digital libraries.
AMIA elected to membership in the Council of Medical Specialty Societies
AMIA was formally elected to regular membership to the Council of Medical Specialty Societies (CMSS) in November 2006. Don E. Detmer, MD, MA, President and CEO expressed optimism about AMIA's future as members working interactively with the CMSS community, “Election to regular membership by the CMSS clearly signals a new era for informatics as a formally recognized specialty domain and for AMIA as its professional home within the ranks of other recognized medical specialties.” At its March 2006 meeting, AMIA was invited to present a full morning session on informatics. Paul Tang, David Bates, and Atul Butte gave presentations and Don Detmer moderated the session. The spring session was well received and, subsequently, the AMIA board chose to seek membership in CMSS. Election brings AMIA to the table of CMSS where it can participate fully in the affairs of the council relating to issues of importance to health and healthcare.
Gerald B. Holzman, MD, President of CMSS offered the following message to AMIA, “It gives me enormous pleasure to welcome the American Medical Informatics Association into membership in the Council of Medical Specialty Societies. CMSS is an organization founded in 1965 by 3 organizations, the American College of Physicians, the American College of Surgeons, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Today there are 30-member specialty and sub-specialty societies, and 6 associate member organizations representing close to 600,000 physicians. As an organization of organizations, its members have the opportunity to discuss and plan how each will carry out its mission to improve the quality of medical care by fostering professionalism and physician competence in this era of ever changing expectations, regulations, and opportunities.”
See the list of CMSS member societies
 On Tuesday, September 19th, AMIA Member, Susan K. Newbold, PhD, RNBC, FAAN, FHIMSS successfully defended her dissertation entitled, "Utility of Search Strategies Used by Nurses Seeking Internet-Based Health Information." Dr. Mary Etta Mills was her committee Chairperson. In addition to Dr. Mills, other AMIA NI-WG members, Dr. Barbara Covington and Dr. Deborah Lewis were members of her committee. AMIA congratulates Dr. Newbold on this recent achievement and wishes her continued success in the informatics community.
For personal congratulations, please send e-mail to Dr Newbold at snewbold@umaryland.edu.
Five AMIA members inducted and/or elected into the Institute of Medicine in 2006 and 2007
Suzanne Bakken |
Randolph Miller |
Ted Shortliffe |
William Tierney |
Peter Szolovits |
David Bates and Peter Szolovits were inducted into the Institute of Medicine this week and Suzanne Bakken, Randolph Miller, and William Tierney were elected to membership. Sue, Randy and Bill will be inducted at the Annual IOM meeting in 2007. Ted Shortliffe, who sits on the IOM Council and Don Detmer, who recently served a term on the IOM membership committee, noted in conversation yesterday that this record is a distinct honor not only for these members but for our field as well. It is extremely difficult for more than one, or at most two members, to be elected in any given year based upon the small size of our profession and its brief history as a scientific discipline.
So, we offer a lusty ‘hip, hip, hurrah’ for these five and another ‘hurrah’ for the many yet to come. A number of other AMIA members serve currently on IOM Boards and study committees. We thank those members for their service to this illustrious American institution. In total, AMIA and ACMI have around two dozen members in total.
AMIA Board Member, 2006 Annual Symposium Scientific Program Committee Chair, Among Modern Healthcare's "100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare"
David W. Bates, MD, MSC has been garnered praise as one of the most prominent health leaders according to the Modern Healthcare's list of “The 100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare” published on August 28. Other heath leaders named include, Bill Gates, George W. Bush, Sen. Bill Frist, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Complete list available at: Modern Healthcare
AMIA President and CEO, Don E. Detmer, Named to New AHIC Privacy Panel
AMIA President & CEO, Don E. Detmer is among the first 15 confirmed members of the newly elevated federal confidentiality, privacy and security work group of the American Health Information Community. Four federal employees and representatives from six healthcare trade, professional or advocacy associations, three provider organizations, a healthcare information technology company and a Washington law firm join to form the newly commissioned group. AHIC is a federal panel created by HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt last year to advise him on healthcare IT issues. AHIC has divided its research activities between five main work groups -- the newest being the confidentiality, privacy and security work group that met for the first time on Aug. 21.
Complete Modern Healthcare article available at: Modern Healthcare
 AMIA Member Patricia Flatley Brennan, RN, PhD, FAAN, FACMI, Moehlman Bascom Professor, School of Nursing and College of Engineering University of Wisconsin-Madison has been named program director for the RWJF Project HealthDesign Initiative. Project HealthDesign: Rethinking the Power and Potential of Personal Health Records is a $3.5-million RWJF national program designed to stimulate innovation in the development of personal health record (PHR) systems. The program's vision is to move the field beyond simply providing consumers with access to electronic medical records to designing a suite of PHRs that work together to help people achieve their health goals in an integrated fashion.
Read the full RWJF interview with Dr. Brennan.
 Starren to Lead Informatics Research Center
Starting Aug. 7, Justin Starren will begin leading the Marshfield (Wis.) Clinic Research Foundation's new Biomedical Informatics Research Center, which will include a focus on the use of information, data and knowledge in biomedical domains. In particular, new methods for structuring, storage, retrieval and sharing of information to improve problem solving and decisionmaking will be studied as a means of providing physicians with the information they need at the point of care.
"Marshfield Clinic will soon become a national leader in medical informatics research, and effective use of information technology will improve the health of our patients while lowering healthcare costs," said Marshfield Clinic Chief Information Officer Carl Christensen in a news release. "Dr. Starren will work to accelerate these much-needed improvements to the healthcare system."
An associate professor in the departments of biomedical informatics and radiology at Columbia University, New York City, Starren earned a bachelor's degree in biology from Washington University in St. Louis. He went on to complete a combined medical degree and master's degree program in immunogenetics from Washington University School of Medicine. While in medical school he began working with computers, which ultimately led to a doctorate in medical informatics at Columbia.
The Marshfield Clinic system provides patient care, research and education with 41 locations in northern, central and western Wisconsin.
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