John Halamka, MD

Dr. Halamka received Bachelors degrees in Medical Microbiology and Public Policy from Stanford, and an MD from the University of California, San Francisco. After an internship and residency in Emergency Medicine at Harbor GeneralóUCLA he received a Masters degree in Medical Informatics from the Harvard/MIT graduate training program. He joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School, where he is now an associate professor of Medicine and Attending Physician in the Division of Emergency Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He has served in various executive positions including Chief Information Officer of CareGroup, Chairman of the New England Health Electronic Data Interchange Network, and Associate Dean for Educational Computing at Harvard Medical School. His nomination notes that he was responsible for one of the first World Wide Web exchanges of electronic health records called CareWeb. This work early work was recognized with the Martin Epstein Award at the 1997 AMIA fall meeting. He helped develop and leads the regional health information organization in Massachusetts, and his work on Health Information exchanges has been the basis for clinical and financial networks in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and California. Dr. Halamka was selected by the Secretary of Health and Human Services to be the chair of the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel. In this role Dr. Halamka is responsible for leading harmonization of interoperability standards that have broad applicability, and have been the foundation for new advances in interoperability such as the exchange of data among hospitals and personal health records providers including Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault. His election to the College recognizes these important advances and contributions to both science and public service.