External Advisory Board
The External Advisory Board (EAB) ensures alignment of the HiGHmed concept with international activities and compliance with international standards. The EAB consists of highly reputed international experts in the field of medical informatics, who will be supported by representatives from patient organizations (German Heart Foundation, the Heidelberger self-help organization and patient advocats) to receive feedback about patient participation in research and the quality of service the patients have received. Therefore, the board will also provide a basis to monitor the progress of HiGHmed’s core principle “patients first”.
Prof. Anastasia Ailamaki
Professor of Computer Sciences and Lab Director of the Data-Intensive Applications and Systems (DIAS) LaboratoryAnastasia Ailamaki is a Professor of Computer and Communication Sciences at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland and the co-founder of RAW Labs SA, a swiss company developing real-time analytics infrastructures for heterogeneous big data. Her research interests are in data-intensive systems and large-scale scientific and business applications. She has received an ERC Consolidator Award (2013), a Finmeccanica endowed chair from the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon (2007), a European Young Investigator Award from the European Science Foundation (2007), an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2005), an NSF CAREER award (2002), the 2018 Nemitsas Prize, and ten best-paper awards in scientific conferences. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2000. She is an ACM fellow, an IEEE fellow, and an elected member of the Swiss and the Chypriot National Research Councils. She has served as a CRA-W mentor, and is a member of the Expert Network of the World Economic Forum.
Dr. Najeeb Al-Shorbaji
Independent Consultant, Amman, Jordan- Lecturer and Researcher at Peter L. Reichertz Institute (PLRI) for Medical Informatics, Hannover, Germany
- formerly: Director of Knowledge Management, Research and Ethics at the World Health Organization (WHO), Geneva, Switzerland
Najeeb Al-Shorbaji has been working as a consultant in knowledge management, eHealth, health information systems, medical librarianship and ePublishing since 10th March 2017. He also works as a part-time lecturer/researcher at the Institute of Medical Informatics at the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany since June 2016. Prior to that he worked as the Vice-President of e-Marefa for Knowledge, Research and Ethics between 26th September 2015 and 9th March 2017. Before that, he worked as Director of Knowledge Management, Research and Ethics at the World Health Organization (WHO) Headquarters in Geneva from September 2008 until his retirement end of August 2015. During this period he also acted as Director of Patient Safety Program for over two years. Before that he worked as Information Scientist, Regional Adviser and Coordinator for Knowledge Management and Sharing in the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean in Amman, Alexandria and Cairo from 1988 to 2008. Najeeb Al-Shorbaji had a number of other jobs in the field of knowledge management before joining WHO. He holds a PhD in Information Science since 1986. He has published more than 200 papers, book chapters and PowerPoint Presentations and participated in more than 200 scientific conferences. He is an honorary fellow of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) and a founding member of the International Academy of Health Science Informatics. He is a peer reviewer for a number of scientific journals and member of editorial board of others.
Dr. Franz Bartmann
formerly: Chairman of the Medical Association (Ärztekammer) Schleswig-HolsteinThe visceral and trauma surgeon Dr Franz Bartmann was the President of the Medical Association Schleswig-Holstein (Ärztekammer Schleswig-Holstein) from 2001 to September 2018. In the course of his membership in the Steering Committee of the German Federal Medical Association (Bundesärztekammer), he was appointed as Chairman and responsible for the division of telemedicine/medical telematics for more than ten years. Furthermore, he has represented the German Federal Medical Association in the Advisory Board of Gematik (association for telematics applications of the German electronic health insurance card).
Dr. Bartmann has published numerous articles in scientific journals as well as the general press. Additionally, he has co-authored several books in the field of health IT and digital health.
In 2013, he was announced honorary member of the German Association for Telemedicine (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Telemedizin). From 2010 to September 2018, he held the appointment as head of the training committee of the German Federal Medical Association and from 2016-2018, he was chairman of the newly established panel for medical education, training and development.
Dr. Jan-Willem Boiten
Program Manager for research data infrastructure projects at Lygature, The Netherlands- Program Manager Translational Research IT (TraIT)
- Coordinator Data4lifesciences programs of the Dutch University Medical Centers
- Co-lead for the IT work package of BBMRI-NL
- Health Research Coordinator in DTL (Dutch Techcenter for the Lifesciences)
Jan-Willem Boiten received his PhD in organic chemistry (computer-aided synthesis methods) at the University of Nijmegen in 1995. Subsequently, he joined Organon fulfilling several project management and other managerial positions within R&D informatics. After two corporate mergers, with Schering-Plough and Merck&Co respectively, Jan-Willem Boiten became responsible for the company’s research informatics activities in The Netherlands and Scotland.
In 2011 Jan-Willem boiten joined the Center for Translational Molecular Medicine (CTMM; now Lygature) to become the program manager for the TraIT (Translational research IT) project, a national IT infrastructure for storing, sharing, and analyzing translational research data. In the meantime, TraIT has been grown to a consortium with more than 30 partners including all Dutch UMCs, charities such as the Heart and the Cancer Foundation, and a broad variety of companies, and serving more than 3500 researchers.
Next to his role in TraIT Jan-Willem Boiten is coordinating the research IT collaboration between the Dutch UMCs, Data4LifeSciences, is acting as co-WP leader within the national biobanking initiative BBMRI-NL 2.0, and is part of the operational team for the new overarching infrastructure for health research in The Netherlands, Health-RI.
Internationally, Jan-Willem Boiten is active in several projects and organizations, in particular CORBEL, EATRIS, EGA, and the tranSMART Foundation.
Prof. James J. Cimino
Director of the Informatics Institute, University of Alabama, Birmingham, USA- Co-Director for Informatics of the Center for Clinical and Translational Science, University of Alabama, Birmingham, USA
- Professor of Medicine, University of Alabama, Birmingham, USA
James Cimino is a board certified internist who completed a National Library of Medicine informatics fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University and then went on to an academic position at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Presbyterian Hospital in New York. He spent 20 years at Columbia, carrying out clinical informatics research, building clinical information systems, teaching medical informatics and medicine, and caring for patients, rising to the rank of full professor in both Biomedical Informatics and Medicine. His principle research areas there included desiderata for controlled terminologies, mobile and Web-based clinical information systems for clinicians and patients, and a context-aware form of clinical decision support called “infobuttons”.
In 2008, he moved to the National Institutes of Health, where he was the Chief of the Laboratory for Informatics Development and a Tenured Investigator at the NIH Clinical Center and the National Library of Medicine. His principle project involved the development of the Biomedical Translational Research Information System (BTRIS), an NIH-wide clinical research data resource.
In 2015, he left NIH to be the inaugural Director of the Informatics Institute at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The Institute is charged with improving informatics research, education, and service across the University, supporting the Personalized Medicine Institute, the Center for Genomic Medicine, and the University Health System Foundation, including improvement of and access to electronic health records. He holds the rank of Tenured Professor in Medicine, and is the Chief for the Informatics Section in the Division of General Internal Medicine. He continues to conduct research in clinical informatics and clinical research informatics, he has been director of the NLM's week-long Biomedical Informatics course (currently hosted by Georgia Regents University) for 16 years, and teaches at Columbia University and Georgetown University as an Adjunct Professor. He is co-editor (with Edward Shortliffe) of a leading textbook on Biomedical Informatics and is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Biomedical Informatics. His honors include Fellowships of the American College of Physicians, the New York Academy of Medicine and the American College of Medical Informatics (Past President), the Priscilla Mayden Award from the University of Utah, the Donald A.B. Lindberg Award for Innovation in Informatics and the President’s Award, both from the American Medical Informatics Association, the Medal of Honor from New York Medical College, the NIH Clinical Center Director’s Award (twice), and induction into the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine).
Claus Duedal Pedersen
Chief Innovation Officer at the Centre for Innovative Medical Technology (CIMT), Odense University Hospital, Odense, Denmark- formerly: EU-Project Coordinator RENEWING HEALTH (REgioNs of Europe WorkINg toGether for HEALTH)
Claus Duedal Pedersen is the Head of the Department for Clinical Innovation at OUH Odense University Hospital. OUH Odense University Hospital is the largest hospital in Denmark with 1300 beds and more than 900.000 out-patients visits every year.
Claus Duedal Pedersen is charge of development, testing and implementation of telemedicine and eHealth solutions on a wide range of areas within the hospital. Over the last 3 – 4 years, various telemedicine solutions have gone from pilot projects to daily practise. The solutions have primarily focus on improving the cooperation between the hospital, the primary sector and the patients. Examples like home-hospitalisation of COPD patients, videoconference based language interpretation service, and shared care system for diabetic foot ulcer patients between homecare and hospital experts. Many of the solutions have been developed in EU projects and are currently being evaluated at large scale and in RCTs as part of the EU project RENEWING HEALTH.
Claus Duedal Pedersen has been working in MedCom – the national Danish organisation for implementation of electronic communication in the health and social care sector. From 2000 – 2003 Claus Duedal Pedersen was in charge of establishing the national Danish IP-based healthcare network. From 2003 – 2008 Claus Duedal Pedersen was the head of MedCom’s international department and project manager of a number of EU projects and was project coordinator of the completed RENEWING HEALTH project. Claus Duedal Pedersen graduated from University of Southern Denmark with a master degree in Economics in 1995.
Prof. Louis D. Fiore
Executive Director of the Massachusetts Veterans Epidemiology Research and Information Center, Boston, USAMore information will follow soon.
Kevin Fitzpatrick
Senior Advisor at Paige.AI- formerly: Chief Executive Officer at ASCO CancerLinQ LLC, Alexandria, USA
Kevin Fitzpatrick joined Paige.AI as a Senior Advisor in 2018. He previously served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer of the American College of Cardiology (ACC), where he jointly led the organization’s overall financial management and operational and strategic planning. Prior to joining the ACC, Mr. Fitzpatrick was Vice President of Business Development for Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, and Managing Director of The Duke/Hewlett Packard Center for Outcomes Research and Director of the Trauma Research Laboratory at Duke University Medical Center. He received the Smithsonian Institution/Computer World Healthcare Computing Innovation Award in 1996.
Mr. Fitzpatrick was instrumental in the creation and implementation of the Diabetes Collaborative Registry™, the first global, cross-specialty clinical diabetes registry designed to track and improve the quality of diabetes and metabolic care across the primary care and specialty care continuum. In addition, he has been very involved in the growth and development of ACC’s PINNACLE Registry®, cardiology's largest outpatient quality improvement registry, capturing data on coronary artery disease, hypertension, heart failure and atrial fibrillation.
Prof. Dipak Kalra
President of the European Institute for Innovation through Health Data (i~HD), Gent, Belgium- Director of the openEHR Foundation
- Clinical Professor of Health Informatics, Centre for Health Informatics and Multi-professional Education (CHIME), University College London, United Kingdom
Dipak Kalra, PhD, FRCGP, FBCS, is President of the European Institute for Innovation through Health Data (www.i-HD.eu) and of the European Institute for Health Records (www.EuroRec.org). He plays a leading international role in research and development of electronic health record architectures and systems and the development of ISO standards on EHR interoperability, personal health records, EHR requirements, EHR security and confidentiality standards. He has led multiple European projects in these areas, including Horizon 2020 and the IMI programme alongside pharma companies, hospitals and ICT companies. He recently co-led a €16m project on the re-use of EHR information for clinical research, EHR4CR, alongside ten global pharmaceutical companies. He is a partner in another IMI project, EMIF, on the development of a European clinical research platform federating multiple population health and cohort studies. Dipak Kalra also led an EU Network of Excellence on semantic interoperability, and is a partner in other EU projects on the sustainability of interoperability assets, the transatlantic sharing patient summaries and quality labelling. Dipak Kalra is Clinical Professor of Health Informatics at University College London, Visiting Professor at the University of Gent, a member of the openEHR Foundation, and standards bodies including CEN, ISO and HL7.
Prof. Christoph U. Lehmann
Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Pediatrics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA- Medical Director of the Child Health Informatics Center (CHIC) for the American Academy of Pediatrics
- Chair of the Examination Committee of the American Board of Preventive Medicine, Subcommittee for Clinical Informatics
Christoph Lehmann is Professor for Biomedical Informatics and Pediatrics at Vanderbilt University where he directs the Clinical Informatics Fellowship Program. He conceived and launched the journal Applied Medical Informatics, devoted to original research and commentary on the use of computer automation in the day-to-day practice of medicine and he served as the Editor-in-Chief since its inception. In 2009, he co-edited Pediatric Informatics, the first textbook on this subject.
Christoph Lehmann served on the board of the American Medical Informatics Association from 2008 to 2013 and served two terms as the organizations secretary. In 2010, he was inducted as a fellow into the American College of Medical Informatics, in 2014 he was elected to the American Pediatric Society, and in 2012 he became a Vice President of the International Medical Informatics Association in charge of the IMIA Yearbook to become President of the International Medical Informatics Association in 2017.
In 2010, Christoph Lehmann was appointed Medical Director of the Child Health Informatics Center for the American Academy of Pediatrics, where he was involved in developing the Model Pediatric EHR Format. Christoph Lehmann served on the federal Health IT Policy Committee and as the chair of the Examination Committee of the American Board of Preventive Medicine, Subcommittee for Clinical Informatics.
Prof. Nancy M. Lorenzi
Vice President for Strategic Change Management, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, USA- Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA
- Clinical Professor of Nursing, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA
Successful implementation of an information system must include effective management of the people (system adoption) and process (e.g. workflow, etc.) as well as technology. Based on extensive research and experience Dr. Lorenzi will support the HIGHMed effort in creating and delivering an effective implementation process with critical success factors.
Nancy has been active in the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA). She was Chair of a Working Conference on the Organizational Impact of Informatics, and Co-Chair of an IMIA Working Group conference with a similar focus in Helsinki, Finland in 1998. In 1993 she organized the Organizational Impact of Medical Informatics for IMIA. She was the IMIA Vice-President for Working Groups and elected as President-elect of the IMIA in 2002 serving as President from 2004-2007 and past-President in 2008. In 2017 she was elected as a Founding Member of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics.
Dr. Lorenzi has been active with American Medical Informatics Association; (AMIA). In 1994 she organized the American Medical Informatics Association working group on People and Organizational issues. She was the Scientific Program Chair of the AMIA Fall Symposium in 1999 and served as Treasurer (2000-2004) Dr. Lorenzi was the AMIA Board of Directors Chair 2010-2011.
She was awarded the 2004 Marcia C. Noyes Award, the highest professional distinction of the Medical Library Association. The Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing inducted her as an as honorary member in 2005. In 2012 Dr. Lorenzi received the Morris F. Collen Award of Excellence for lifetime achievement and significant contributions to the discipline of medical informatics by the American College of Informatics. At Vanderbilt University Medical Center she received the Five Pillar Leader Award that was created “to recognize exceptional leaders who consistently model a balanced approach to leadership”. She is an elected Fellow in the American College of Medical Informatics, the Medical Library Association and the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics.
Dr. Lorenzi published significantly in peer-reviewed literature. She authored or edited a number of books considered to be definitive in her field. She is internationally recognized as an expert in the areas of managing technological change related to information technology, especially the organizational and people-process components that lead to success or failure.
Prof. Christian Lovis
Professor of Clinical Informatics, Department of Radiology and Medical Informatics, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland- Head of the Division, Medical Information Sciences, Geneva University Hospitals, Geneva, Switzerland
Christian Lovis is professor of clinical informatics at the university of Geneva and chairman of the division of medical information sciences at the university hospitals of Geneva. He is a medical doctor board certified in Internal Medicine with special emphasis on emergency medicine, master in public health from the University of Washington, parallel education in biomedical informatics at the University of Geneva, focusing on clinical information systems, clinical data interoperability and medical semantics. Christian Lovis played an important role in the Swiss Federal strategy for eHealth and the future federal law for the shared patient record as chair of the standard and architecture and semantics working groups. He is member of the executive board of the Swiss Personalized Health network initiative. One of the foci of his team is on phenotype clinical data interoperability and semantic representation to support research, including a strong lead on computational linguistics and tools to use medical narratives and texts. He is a Fellow of the American Medical Informatics association (FACMI) and medical informatics certified of the German Medical Informatics Association. Christian Lovis co-authors more than 150 publications. He is editorial board member of several peer-reviewed journals in biomedical informatics, such as the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA), PLOS One, Applied Clinical Informatics (ACI) and BMC Big Data Analytics. Christian was vice-chair of the board of directors of HIMSS until 2016. He is the president of the European Federation of Medical Informatics. Christian Lovis has participated to several start-ups.