How Can Health Care Create Knowledge out of Information?

Announced in March as the new president of AMIA (formerly the American Medical Informatics Association), he is taking over a post usually held by a high-level academic researcher. While Fickensher has done his share of that sort of thing, his career has been unusually diverse, including long tenures in family practice, health system administration, and consulting.

Starting in health care at 16, as an orderly in a nursing home, he drove an ambulance to help pay for college and medical school. He fell under the informatics spell while creating a rural health program in North Dakota and exploring the potential for telemedicine to improve care there. He believes informatics is "the issue of the next decade" and informaticists will play a central role in the battle to reduce cost while improving quality and access.