Public Biography
Dr. Wanda Pratt is a Professor and the Associate Dean for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access, and Sovereignty (IDEAS) in the Information School with an adjunct appointment in Biomedical & Health Informatics in the Medical School at the University of Washington. She received her Ph.D. in Medical Informatics from Stanford University, her M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Texas, and her B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Kansas. Her research focuses on both understanding the work people do to manage their health and designing new technologies to support that work and reduce its burden. She has worked with hospitalized patients as well as people coping with a variety of chronic diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, asthma, and heart disease. Her recent work focuses on support for vulnerable or underserved populations. Dr. Pratt has received best paper awards from the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), and the Journal of the American Society of Information Science & Technology (JASIS&T). Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Library of Medicine, the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Intel, Google, and Microsoft. Dr. Pratt is a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics.
Historic ACMI Biography
Dr. Pratt received her Bachelors degree in electrical engineering from the University of Kansas, a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD in Medical Informatics from Stanford. She began her academic career as an assistant professor in the information and computer science department at the University of California, Irvine, then migrated north to the University of Washington, where she was at the time of election to the College an associate professor of biomedical and health informatics, with a joint appointment in the Information School at UW. Dr. Pratt has parlayed her graduate work in information retrieval and computer-supported cooperative work into a highly successful research program directed at understanding and meeting the needs of patients as they undertake their work of battling serious diseases and staying alive. She designed and implemented a patient-oriented online system called HealthWeaver that helps cancer patients manage information about their care, get questions answered and interact with others online. Early on, HealthWeaver embodied technologies for social networking, anticipating the subsequent wave of such applications on the Internet. Dr. Prattís excellence and creativity in research are matched by her excellence in teaching and mentorship, and many of the trainees she has mentored have gone on to careers in informatics research. Her election to the College recognizes these scholarly achievements.
Affiliations
The American College of Medical Informatics
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
2011
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Steering Committee
Member
The DEI Steering Committee guides and executes AMIA’s strategic goals and objectives related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Learn more about this group