Clinical Informatics

About Clinical Informatics at BIDMC

The Division of Clinical Informatics, created over 40 years ago by Drs. Howard Bleich and Warner Slack, was among the first academic divisions in the world to concentrate on the use of computers for patient care, teaching, and medical research. The goals of the Division have been to improve the quality and reduce the cost of medical care, to enhance the quality of medical education, to improve the relationship between doctor and patient, and to explore innovative approaches to research through computing.

Our Research

Our faculty has developed hospital-wide clinical computing systems at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Our faculty were the very first to engage patients in direct dialogue with computers, and have been building and evolving clinical decision support systems for four decades. Today, DCI faculty continues to lead the evolution and study of personal health technologies, web-based clinical computing systems, national health systems, and international comparative approaches. Our faculty is driven to find solutions to real-world problems. Current research includes the design and evaluation of clinical information systems, translational research platforms, patient portals, and patient engagement, quality improvement processes and analytics, clinical decision support systems, online learning systems, mobile health applications, global e-health applications. Learn more about our Research.

Our Educational Programs

The Division hosts a wide range of training programs, from internships to fellowships, to international educational programs. DCI is home to the BIDMC Multidisciplinary Clinical Informatics Fellowship Program, a two-year ACGME-accredited training program. Harvard Medical Students can apply for rotation at DCI. This elective will provide students with a broad overview of the newly recognized field of clinical informatics. Learn more about our training programs, from internships to fellowships, to international industrial programs.

For more information, please contact:

• Yuri Quintana, PhD, Chief of the Division of Clinical Informatics

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Leadership

Yuri Quintana, PhD, Chief of the Division of Clinical Informatics

Yuri Quintana, PhD, is Chief of the Division of Clinical Informatics. His research focuses on the learning health system and communities of practice to improve the uptake of best practices by health professionals and patients, as well as the best use of online platforms that support communities of practice to implement evidence-based clinical practices by health professionals. He leads the development of Alicanto, an online platform and mobile app that supports healthcare teams collaborating online to develop standardized clinical care pathways and train staff to implement those pathways. International groups have used Alicanto for cancer, diabetes, and maternal health. He leads research on methodologies to evaluate mobile apps to improve health behavior. In 2020, he led the development of an evidence-based framework for assessing the efficacy of mental health apps. This framework has been widely disseminated in Canada to health care organizations and policy leaders, including all Canadian members of the Parliament and Senators. He also researches patient-centered platforms for improving the care of patients at home by formal and informal caregivers. This research area is essential as the demographics of most countries shift to an older population. With funding from AHRQ, he led the development of the InfoSAGE (Information Sharing Across Generations) patient-centered family-focused care coordination online platform initially designed for frail elders over 75 and their family caregivers.