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Public Biography
Edward H. Shortliffe is Chair Emeritus and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is also Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Informatics in the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University and Adjunct Professor of Healthcare Policy and Research (Health Informatics) at Weill Cornell Medical College. Since 2017 he has been a Senior Executive Consultant to IBM Watson Health. Previously he was a Scholar in Residence at the New York Academy of Medicine and served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). He was Professor in the School of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston and before that Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Arizona State University and Professor of Basic Medical Sciences and Professor of Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. He served as the founding dean of the University of Arizona College of Medicine (Phoenix) from 2007-2008. Before that he was the Rolf A. Scholdager Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City (2000-2007) and Professor of Medicine and of Computer Science at Stanford University (1979-2000). After receiving an A.B. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard College in 1970, he moved to Stanford University where he was awarded a Ph.D. in Medical Information Sciences in 1975 and an M.D. in 1976. During the early-1970s, he was principal developer of the medical expert system known as MYCIN. After a pause for residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and Stanford Hospital (1976-1979), he joined the Stanford internal medicine faculty where he spearheaded the formation of a Stanford graduate degree program in biomedical informatics. In January 2000 he moved to Columbia University. His research interests have emphasized artificial intelligence and integrated decision-support. Dr. Shortliffe is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He has also been elected to fellowship in the American College of Medical Informatics and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. He served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Biomedical Informatics from 2001 to 2020. He received the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the ACM in 1976 and the Morris F. Collen Award from ACMI in 2006. Dr. Shortliffe has authored over 350 articles and several books in the fields of biomedical computing and artificial intelligence. His textbook, Biomedical Informatics: Computer Applications in Health Care and Biomedicine is now in its fifth edition (1st edition, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1990; 2nd edition, New York: Springer, 2000), 3rd edition, New York: Springer, 2006; 4th edition, London: Springer, 2014; 5th edition, London: Springer, 2021). He is also an editor of the textbook Intelligent Systems in Medicine and Health: The Role of AI (with Trevor Cohen and Vimla Patel, first edition, London: Springer 2022).

Morris F. Collen Award

JAMIA article

Historic ACMI Biography

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Ted Shortliffe is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and Chief of its Section on Medical Informatics (SMI). A 1970 graduate in applied mathematics from Harvard College, he earned both an MD (1976) and a PhD in Medical Information Sciences (1975) at Stanford. After a pause for internal medicine training at Massachusetts General Hospital (1976-77) and Stanford Hospital (1977-79), he joined the Stanford medical faculty with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Computer Science. Within a few years he had initiated a graduate training program in Medical Information Sciences, which he now directs. He practices on the inpatient service and in the outpatient clinics at Stanford, but spends the majority of his time with research and education in informatics. During the early 1970s, he was principal developer of the medical expert system known as MYCIN, which served as his doctoral dissertation research. In recognition of this innovative exploration of the role and capabilities of rule-based expert systems, he received the Grace Murray Hopper Award (distinguished computer scientist under age 30) from the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) in 1976. Upon joining the Stanford faculty he received a Research Career Development Award from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and was appointed in 1980 to the NLMĂ­s Biomedical Library Research Committee, which he now chairs. He has also led one of the long-range planning committees (in medical informatics) formed by the new director of the NLM and has been extensively involved with reviews and site visits on behalf of that agency. In recent years he has been elected to the Board of Directors of both the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) and the American Association for Medical Systems and Informatics (AAMSI). He founded and was first leader of the Medical Subgroup of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-M) and was recently appointed to the Medical Informatics Subcommittee of the American College of Physicians. Meanwhile, at Stanford, he continues to pursue his interest in expert systems with the development of an advisory tool for cancer chemotherapy (ONCOCIN) and is Co-Principal Investigator of the SUMEX-AIM Computing Resource, which provides time-shared computing support to a nationwide community of researchers involved with the applications of artificial intelligence in medicine. A frequent contributor at SCAMC and other medical computing meetings, he is the author of many well known articles in expert systems, medical computing, and artificial intelligence. The book version of his doctoral dissertation in among the most highly cited works in all of computer science.

Affiliations

The American College of Medical Informatics

morris-award-winner
Morris F. Collen Award Winner

ACMI is a college of elected Fellows from the U.S. and abroad who have made significant and sustained contributions to the field of medical informatics. It is the central body for a community of scholars and practitioners who are committed to advancing the informatics field.

Year Elected
1984
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