Of 34 worldwide inductees and 14 from North America, 3 are from Indiana
Three Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University School of Medicine leaders have received the prestigious designation of Fellow in the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI), located in Geneva, Switzerland.
Regenstrief President and Chief Executive Officer Peter Embí, M.D., M.S.; Regenstrief Vice President for Research Development Eneida Mendonca, M.D., PhD; and Chief Information Officer Umberto Tachinardi, M.D., MSc, were all elected to the 2020 class. Fourteen of the 34 worldwide inductees are from North America, and three of those are from Indiana.
IAHSI is made up of international health science informatics leaders who share the goal of disseminating knowledge, fostering new ideas and encouraging worldwide collaboration. They work to stimulate and guide future directions in informatics, advise government and private organizations about the importance of data-based knowledge and provide problem solving strategies using that knowledge. Academy membership is one of the highest honors in the international field of biomedical and health informatics. The academy was formed by the International Medical Informatics Association.
Regenstrief Institute is well represented within IAHSI. Former research scientists Clem McDonald, M.D.; William M. Tierney, M.D.; and former Center Director J. Marc Overhage, M.D., PhD, are also members of this prestigious academy. Drs. McDonald, Tierney and Overhage were all inducted once they had moved on from Regenstrief.
Peter Embí, M.D., M.S.
Dr. Embí is an internationally recognized researcher, educator and leader in the field of clinical and translational research informatics. His areas of interest include biomedical informatics, health information technology, patient-centered outcomes and learning health systems. He recently helped lead the development of a visual dashboard that informs the State of Indiana’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the creation of a statewide pandemic collaboratory.
In addition to serving as the president and chief executive officer of Regenstrief Institute, Dr. Embí is the Leonard Betley Professor of Medicine and associate dean for informatics and health services research at Indiana University School of Medicine, associate director of informatics with Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute and vice president for Learning Health Systems with Indiana University Health.
He previously served in various leadership positions at The Ohio State University, including interim chair of biomedical informatics, informatics director of the OSU Center for Clinical and Translational Science, and chief research information officer at the OSU Wexner Medical Center. Prior to that, he was on the faculty of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, where he was the founding director of the UC Center for Health Informatics.
Dr. Embí earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Florida and his medical degree from the University of South Florida. He completed his internal medicine residency and chief residency at the Oregon Health & Science University, where he also completed a fellowship and earned a master of science degree in medical informatics and clinical epidemiology. He completed his medical training with a fellowship in rheumatology and immunology at The Cleveland Clinic.
Among his numerous awards and recognitions, Dr. Embí is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, and he is past chair of the Board of Directors of the American Medical Informatics Association.
Eneida Mendonca, M.D., PhD
Dr. Mendonca is a pioneer in natural language processing to improve health and healthcare delivery. Her research is focused on health information technology and informatics methodologies to support clinical practice, health prevention and translational research. More specifically, she develops novel language-driven approaches and automated learning methods to support decision making; leveraging automated semantic and statistical methods to extract biomedical data from patients’ records; creating new ways to automatically integrate evidence into clinical practice; and developing infrastructure for clinical and translational research.
Recently, she was a co-author on a groundbreaking publication on artificial intelligence in healthcare from the National Academy of Medicine. The document is viewed as a reference for all stakeholders involved in AI and healthcare.
In addition to serving as Regenstrief vice president for research development, Dr. Mendonca also is the interim director of the Clem McDonald Center for Biomedical Informatics at Regenstrief. She is also a professor of pediatrics and professor of biostatistics at Indiana University School of Medicine.
Dr. Mendonca received her medical degree from the Universidade Federal – Pelotas, and her M.S. in Medicine (Cardiology) from the Fundação Universitária de Cardiologia, Porto Alegre, Brazil, where she is board certified in pediatrics and pediatric critical care. Dr. Mendonca earned her doctoral degree in biomedical informatics from Columbia University in New York, USA.
Dr. Mendonca is a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) and a longtime member of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) and has served in several leadership roles for the organization. She is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, with significant contributions to the AAP Partnership for Policy Implementation. She has also served in leadership positions for in the Brazilian Society for Healthcare Informatics (SBIS).
Umberto Tachinardi, M.D., MSc
Dr. Tachinardi has more than 30 years of success in developing and implementing health informatics technologies. His research interests include clinical and translational research informatics and precision health.
In addition to being the chief information officer at Regenstrief, he is also the director of clinical research informatics for Regenstrief and the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute and the chief informatics officer for the Indiana University Grand Challenge Precision Health Initiative. He is the assistant dean for clinical informatics and a professor of biostatistics at Indiana University School of Medicine. At IU and Regenstrief, his focus is to lead the informatics components of complex and large projects.
He served as the CIO at the State of Sao Paulo Secretary of Health, and before that the Heart Institute of University of Sao Paulo, both in Brazil. Dr. Tachinardi was the associate dean for biomedical informatics at the School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Madison and as the chief research information officer at UW Health in Madison, Wisconsin. He was responsible for building and operating UW Health’s translational research resources such as data warehouses and new functions in the electronic health record systems.
He idealized and directed the Clinical and Health Informatics Institute of the University of Wisconsin (UW) Institute for Clinical and Translation Research, where he served as the executive scientific director. While at UW he was a principal investigator for a PCORI/PCORnet Clinical Data Research Network, the Greater Plains Collaborative (GPC).
Dr. Tachinardi is a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) and a longtime member of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) and has served in several leadership roles for the organization. Dr. Tachinardi is one of the founding members and a former president of the Brazilian Society for Healthcare Informatics (SBIS).
About Regenstrief Institute
Founded in 1969 in Indianapolis, the Regenstrief Institute is a local, national and global leader dedicated to a world where better information empowers people to end disease and realize true health. A key research partner to Indiana University, Regenstrief and its research scientists are responsible for a growing number of major healthcare innovations and studies. Examples range from the development of global health information technology standards that enable the use and interoperability of electronic health records to improving patient-physician communications, to creating models of care that inform practice and improve the lives of patients around the globe.
Regenstrief Institute is celebrating 50 years of healthcare innovation. Sam Regenstrief, a successful entrepreneur from Connersville, Indiana, founded the institute with the goal of making healthcare more efficient and accessible for everyone. His vision continues to guide the institute’s research mission.
About International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA)
IMIA is the world body for health and biomedical informatics and an ‘association of associations’. IMIA provides informatics leadership and expertise to the multidisciplinary health-focused community and to policy makers, to enable the transformation of healthcare in accord with the world-wide vision of improving the health of the world population.
