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Bioinformatics Initiatives |
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Bioinformatics Pioneer Will Lead New Initiatives at Emory
University
Other Topics:
Medical Informatics
Software Development,
Healthcare Management
Emory University
July 21, 2008
Joel H. Saltz, MD, PhD, a pioneer in the fields of
high-performance computing and biomedical informatics, will join
Emory University’s Woodruff Health Sciences Center in September
as director of the Center for Comprehensive Informatics and as
Emory Healthcare’s Chief Medical Information Officer. The
announcement was made by Fred Sanfilippo, MD, PhD, Emory
executive vice president for health affairs, CEO of the Woodruff
Health Sciences Center and chairman of Emory Healthcare. |
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Saltz will help
develop and lead new initiatives that are expected to fuel
scientific discovery in health and medicine and to empower more
precise and scientifically informed decision-making in patient
care, says Sanfilippo.
Saltz currently serves as professor and
chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics and professor
in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at The
Ohio State University (OSU), Davis Endowed Chair of Cancer at
OSU, and a senior fellow of the Ohio Supercomputer Center. Prior
to coming to OSU, Saltz was professor of pathology and
informatics in the Department of Pathology at Johns Hopkins
School of Medicine and professor in the Department of Computer
Science at the University of Maryland.
With more than $4.7 million in National Institutes of Health
funding and some $70 million in total active grant funding,
Saltz has more than 325 publications and 70 invited
presentations to his credit. He is trained both as a computer
scientist and as a medical scientist. He received his MD and his
PhD (computer science) degrees at Duke University. He completed
a residency in clinical pathology at Johns Hopkins University
and is a board-certified clinical pathologist.
As chief medical information officer for Emory Healthcare, Saltz
will direct strategic planning and implementation of the
comprehensive Emory Medical Information Enterprise. He will
guide recruitment, research and resource allocation for
informatics programs across academic departments. Additionally,
he will lead the further development of Emory’s external
partnerships in bioinformatics, including those with the Georgia
Institute of Technology, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta,
Morehouse School of Medicine, the Atlanta Veterans Affairs
Medical Center, the Georgia Research Alliance and the Georgia
Cancer Coalition.
"Dr. Saltz will help us achieve our vision of transforming
health and healing by applying computer science to the
overarching challenges facing the biological and biomedical
sciences" says Sanfilippo. "He will accelerate our already
outstanding momentum in biomedical research as we continue to
increase the quality of care we provide to our patients and
their families. His addition to our faculty is a significant
step forward toward our goal of being the 21st century model of
an academic health sciences and health services center"
Among his many noteworthy achievements, Saltz has been a leader
in the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG), an initiative
of the National Cancer Institute Center for Biomedical
Informatics and Information Technology. The initiative helps
cancer researchers, clinicians and patients share relevant data
and information, speed translation of new cancer diagnostics and
therapies from the laboratory to the community and help fully
realize the potential of predictive health. Saltz has
spearheaded other groundbreaking biomedical information projects
in cardiovascular medicine, clinical research and imaging. While
at Johns Hopkins in 1996, he created prototypes for the first
virtual microscope software.
The field of bioinformatics uses computer technology to analyze
and interpret a wealth of biological data generated from
fundamental research and translates that information into the
knowledge necessary to develop medical innovations. Biomedical
informatics will enhance established and emerging Emory programs
in the neurosciences, predictive health, computational and life
sciences, transplantation, global health, vaccines and
inflammation, regenerative medicine, respiratory health,
cardiovascular health, cancer and clinical trials. |
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