Edward H. Shortliffe, MD, PhD, MACP, FACMI, FIAHSI

Biography

Professor Edward H. Shortliffe is a physician and computer scientist widely regarded as one of the founders of biomedical informatics. He is Chair Emeritus and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University, and holds an adjunct appointment at Weill Cornell Medicine. He read applied mathematics at Harvard before completing a PhD in medical information sciences and an MD at Stanford. His doctoral research produced MYCIN, an early knowledge-based system for clinical decision support, and contributed foundational methods for the representation of medical knowledge and the explanation of computer-generated recommendations. He went on to lead the medical informatics programme at Stanford and to chair Columbia's Department of Biomedical Informatics from 2000 to 2007. He is a past President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Medical Informatics Association, a member of the National Academy of Medicine, and an elected fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics. He has authored or edited numerous books and articles, including successive editions of the standard reference Biomedical Informatics.