George Hripcsak MD, MS

Vivian Beaumont Allen Professor of Biomedical Informatics
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Dr. George Hripcsak, MD, MS, is interested in the clinical information stored in electronic health records and in the development of next-generation health record systems. Health record data are sparse, irregularly sampled, complex, and biased. Using nonlinear time series analysis methods borrowed from statistical physics, machine learning, knowledge engineering, and natural language processing, he is developing the methods necessary to support clinical research and patient safety initiatives using health record data. Dr. Hripcsak also has a long track record of developing, implementing, and studying informatics interventions to improve health care. He has published frequently on evaluation in biomedical informatics, leveraging his training in biostatistics.

Dr. Hripcsak is Vivian Beaumont Allen Professor and Chair of Columbia University’s Department of Biomedical Informatics and Director of Medical Informatics Services for New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia Campus, and he has more than 25 years of experience in biomedical informatics. He is a board-certified internist with degrees in chemistry, medicine, and biostatistics. He is currently co-chair of the Meaningful Use Workgroup of HSS’s Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology; it defines the criteria by which health care providers collect incentives for using electronic health records. He led the effort to create the Arden Syntax, a language for representing health knowledge that has become a national standard. He designed, deployed, and continues to maintain WebCIS, one of the earliest (1998) large-scale Web-based clinical information systems, which has 7,000 users entering and reviewing data on 3 million patients.

Dr. Hripcsak chaired the National Library of Medicine’s Biomedical Library and Informatics Review Committee. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine and an elected fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and the New York Academy of Medicine. He has published more than 250 papers.