Jerome Osheroff, MD

After training in electrical engineering and medicine at George Washington University in the 1980s, Dr. Osheroff moved to the University of Pittsburgh for his internal medicine residency and fellowship. It was there that he became familiar with the universityís dynamic work on internist/QMR and was admitted to the medical informatics fellowship program. After a brief period on the clinical faculty at Pitt, he was attracted to the American College of Physicians (ACP), where he served as an associate in clinical information management and, in time, as deputy editor for their work on integrated clinical information resources. In 1999, he assumed the role as Director of Informatics at Praxis Press and has become Chief Clinical Informatics Officer with Thomson MICROMEDEX since it acquired Praxis in early 2002. He also serves on the faculty and medical staff of the University of Pennsylvania Health System. Dr. Osheroff is recognized for his effective efforts to enhance the use of computers in clinical practice, especially among physicians. His book with the ACP, Computers in Clinical Practice, has been especially well received, and he has also developed videos, CDs, lectures, self-assessment programs, curricula, and Web offerings. Also important have been his articles reporting on empiric efforts to categorize clinical information needs. This work has resulted in the promulgation of recommendations for clinical information resource developers, and also in his recent work with the NLM to produce a national databank for clinical questions. Motivating much of his work has been his belief in clinical decision-support systems, emanating from his work with QMR but continuing with the development of the early Physiciansí Information and Education Resource (PIER) system at the ACP, the ëëBest Practice of Medicineíí resource at Praxis MD, and next-generation offerings at Thomson MICROMEDEX. He leads a work group of the HIMSS Patient Safety Task Force in developing resources to help health care institutions successfully implement decision-support technologies to improve outcomes, including a clinical decision support (CDS) implementersí workbook (freely available on the HIMS