William R Hersh, M.D.
- Email:
- click here
- Phone:
- 503 494-4502
- Lab Phone:
- 503-494-4563
Lab Page: www.billhersh.info
Background
William Hersh, MD is Professor and Chair of the Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology in the School of Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland, Oregon, USA. Dr. Hersh received his BS in Biology from the University of Illinois in 1980 and his MD from the University of Illinois in 1984. After completing a Residency in Internal Medicine at University of Illinois Hospital in 1987, he completed a Fellowship in Medical Informatics at Harvard University in 1990. Since that time, he has been a faculty member in the OHSU School of Medicine. Dr. Hersh is a leader and innovator in biomedical informatics both in education and research. In education, he developed and serves as Director of all of OHSU’s graduate biomedical informatics education programs, including the Master of Science, the Master of Biomedical Informatics, the Graduate Certificate, and the Doctor of Philosophy. Dr. Hersh also spearheaded OHSU’s efforts in distance learning for biomedical informatics, which are available up to the master’s degree level. Dr. Hersh has also made many contributions in research. His most recent work has focused on the quantity and characteristics of the workforce needed to implement health information technology, especially in clinical settings. Dr. Hersh is also active in clinical and translational research informatics. He serves as Director of the Biomedical Informatics Program of the Oregon Clinical & Translational Research Institute (OCTRI, www.octri.org) and was Chair of the National Informatics Steering Committee of the Clinical & Translational Science Award (CTSA) program of the National Institutes of Health from 2006-2008. His research originally focused in the area of information retrieval, where he has authored over 125 scientific papers as well as the book, Information Retrieval: A Health and Biomedical Perspective (Springer, 2009), now in its third edition.
Summary of Current Research
Dr. Hersh's main research interest is the use of knowledge-based information (e.g., scientific literature and content that summarizes it) by health care practitioners and researchers. Presently, he is aiming to build better information retrieval (i.e., search engine) systems and to evaluate their use. He is also interested in educational technologies, directing the large distance learning program in medical informatics at OHSU, and in the teaching and application of evidence-based medicine.
Selected Publications
"Welcome from the general conference chair,"
"EHRs and health care quality: Correlation with out-of-date, differently purposed data does not equate with causality,"
"Health-care hit or miss?,"
"Identifying patients for clinical studies from electronic health records: TREC medical records track at OHSU,"
"Electronic health records facilitate development of disease registries and more,"
