Editorial Board
Editor-in-Chief
Christian Lovis, MD, MPH, FACMI
Professor and Chairman, Division of Medical Information Sciences, University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG), University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland
Research Focus
Christian Lovis’ work is mostly driven by using digitalization of data, information, and knowledge. His team’s research focuses on three major fields: (1) clinical information systems: design and architecture, sustainability, and impacts; (2) data- and knowledge-driven science: natural language processing, knowledge representation, semantics and interoperability, context awareness, advanced analytics, predictive, and decision support; and (3) human factors: advanced interactions, augmented reality, conversational, qualitative and quantitative evaluation, and ergonomics. Christian’s own research is led by the desire to use medical information sciences to improve health, well-being, and knowledge in life sciences, with an MD thesis centered on natural language processing and large datasets to support physician’s work. This is a theme that he has continued all through his career, to the big data and artificial intelligence era, to address the challenge of real-time usable integration of multisource, multimodal data with persistent semantics.
Bio
Christian Lovis is a Professor of Clinical Informatics at the University of Geneva and leads the Division of Medical Information Sciences at the Geneva University Hospitals. He is a medical doctor board certified in Internal Medicine with emphasis on Emergency Medicine and holds a Master's in Public Health from the University of Washington, WA. In parallel to medicine, he studied Medical Informatics at the University of Geneva under the supervision of Prof Jean-Raoul Scherrer. Christian developed and deployed the clinical information system at the university hospitals of Geneva, a consortium of all public in- and out-patient facilities of Geneva State, Switzerland. Christian is the author of more than 150 peer-reviewed papers in the field of Medical Informatics. He has occupied several positions in Medical Informatics organizations, such Chair of the IMIA WG on Health Information Systems (HIS), President of the Swiss Medical Informatics, President of the European Federation of Medical Informatics, Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors of HIMSS. Christian is a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and a founding member of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics. He has been heavily involved in the development and enforcement of the Swiss Federal Law for the Shared Patient Record.
Quote
"All what we do around digital “everything”, ends up impacting life of people, saving lives and killing people, improving health and well-being, or hurting and provoking suffering. Really, daily. And this is why we have to do it seriously, building strong evidence, solid foundations. We cannot hide behind statistics, profit or “quick wins” to accept everything, anything. These numbers, they are us."
Amanda Iannaccio, Managing Editor
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Editorial Board Members
Associate Editors
Arriel Benis, PhD
Associate Professor, Head of the department of Digital Medical Technologies, Holon Institute of Technology (HIT), Israel
Research Focus
Arriel Benis’s research is data-driven, real-world-oriented, and decision support-focused. His main fields of interest are (1) Health Care Informatics and Public Health with a broad focus on Health Communication; (2) Artificial Intelligence and Data Science and, more particularly, Data Mining/Process Mining, Machine Learning, Ontologies, and Language Processing; (3) Social Media, Social Networks and Social Physics; (4) Systemics in Medicine (One Health/One Digital Health), Emergency and Disaster Management.
Bio
Prof. Arriel Benis is an Associate Professor at the Holon Institute of Technology (HIT), Israel. He is the head of the department of Digital Medical Technologies. He is also the head of the track "Management of Information and Technologies for Health Systems" of the M.Sc. of Technology Management. He is additionally involved in the activities of the department Data Science.
Arriel leads the BIA laboratory (Business Intelligence and Automation Lab.), wherein research mainly deals with Data and Information Intelligence, emphasizing Data Science and Artificial Intelligence applications in Health, Medicine, and Industry 4.0. He holds a PhD in Medical Informatics and Artificial Intelligence from Paris North University (today, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord) and an MSc in Medical Informatics and Communication Technologies from Pierre and Marie Curie University (today, Sorbonne University). He has a background in Computer and Information Science and Engineering, and Biomedical Sciences and Engineering. For several years, Prof. Arriel Benis served as a Senior Researcher and Principal Investigator in different organizations in the Health Care, Public Health, and Social Media fields. Arriel is the author of dozens of peer-reviewed papers on Medical Informatics and Public Health. Additionally, he has been involved in different roles in Emergency Medical Services. Prof. Benis leads efforts to develop international academic cooperation worldwide in Medical Informatics, Digital Health, and applied Artificial Intelligence. He occupies several leadership positions in medical information organizations. Arriel is a board member of the Israeli Association for Medical Informatics (ILAMI); the Israeli/ILAMI representative, the co-chair of the Healthcare Informatics for Interregional Cooperation (HIIC) and One Digital Health (funder, ODH) working groups, and Executive Officer at the European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI); and the funder and chair of the “One Digital Health” working group at the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA).
Alexandre Castonguay, PhD
Faculty of Nursing, Université de Montréal, Canada
Research Focus
Alexandre Castonguay’s research interests are mainly focused on supporting the implementation of health information technologies (dHealth) in the healthcare system by a) generating integrative and evolutionary theoretical models explaining the acceptability, adoption, and maintenance of use of dHealth by different types of health professionals, in different contexts of prevention and care, and b) the evaluation of the effects of the implementation of dHealth on the quality of life at work of health professionals, as well as on the quality and accessibility of the care they provide.
Bio
Alexandre Castonguay is an Assistant professor at the Faculty of Nursing at the Université de Montréal as well as an associate researcher for the Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention and Management axis at the Centre intégré universitaire de santé et de services sociaux du Nord-de-l'île-de-Montréal Research Center.
Dr. Castonguay completed a doctorate in social psychology (Ph.D.) in 2018, focusing on health behavior change theories. Then, he completed two postdoctoral fellowships in 2019 and in 2022, where he examined the role of digital technologies, including telemedicine, connected health, patient portals, and artificial intelligence, in optimizing the quality, continuity, and efficiency of care.
Qingyu Chen, PhD
Research Fellow, National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institute of Health, US
Research Focus
Dr. Chen’s research is on AI and data science for health care and biomedicine. His primary research areas include machine learning-assisted disease diagnosis and prognosis, biomedical and clinical text mining, and trustworthy AI.
Bio
Dr. Qingyu Chen is a research fellow in biomedical and clinical informatics at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Intramural Research Program, the National Institute of Health (NIH), and the lead instructor of BIOF395 Introduction to Text Mining, Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences (FAES) at NIH. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science (Biomedical Informatics) from the University of Melbourne (the recipient of the Microsoft Master Innovator Award). Dr. Chen’s research is on AI and data science for health care and biomedicine. His primary research areas include machine learning-assisted disease diagnosis and prognosis, biomedical and clinical text mining, and trustworthy AI; his work spans medical images, clinical notes, biomedical literature, and biological sequences. He has led research in major phases of AI for health care research, including data generation and standardization, method development, and AI downstream accountability. He has published over 35 first-authored papers out of ~60 under these directions and is the first author of popular web servers such as LitCovid (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/research/coronavirus/). He received competitive awards such as the NIH Fellows Award for Research Excellence and the top performance award in three machine learning challenge tasks in biomedical and clinical informatics.
Mircea Focsa, MD, PhD
Associate Professor, Victor Babeș University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Timisoara, Romania
Research Focus
Dr. Fosca's research focuses on the secondary use of medical data, medical ontology and knowledge-based clinical decision support systems.
Bio
Dr Mircea Focsa (MD, PhD) is an Associate Professor of Medical Informatics and Biostatistics at the Victor Babes University of Medicine and Pharmacy Timisoara. He is a medical doctor and specialist in Public Health and Healthcare Management. In the past years, he contributed to an international team for developing knowledge-based clinical information systems for family practice, coordinating ontology and medical algorithms development. He also led the interoperability group - part of the Theme Advisory Committee for Health Services (CCTSS) of the Romanian Ministry of Health. Mircea actively supported the adoption of quality EHR systems, as a founder member and President of Prorec Romania and a member of the EFMI and Eurorec Institute. He also contributed to the implementation of the first Romanian Patient Recruitment System, part of Clinerion's global network. Throughout his career, he participated in many European or National funded projects on eHealth and eLearning domains, also acting as a European expert (eCOST, CEF-Telecom, Horizon).
Jennifer Hefner, MPH, PhD
Assistant Professor of Health Services Management and Policy, College of Public Health, The Ohio State University, USA
Bio
Dr. Hefner conducts scholarship reviews in the fields of health services research and clinical informatics. Her research focuses on applying management and organizational theories to the study of healthcare transformation in hospital settings. Currently, Dr. Hefner is working on understanding management strategies that are effective in reducing healthcare-associated infections, evaluating healthcare quality measures and studying the impact of patient portals on healthcare workflow. Dr. Hefner is Associate Editor for Advances in Healthcare Management, a biannual peer reviewed journal published by Emerald Press.
Jeffrey Klann, MEng, PhD
Harvard Medical School, USA
Research Focus
Jeffrey Klann’s research focuses on the secondary use of medical data for knowledge discovery, quality, safety, and efficiency. This takes the form of informatics tools that enable research and discovery (eg, data warehouses, analysis platforms, distributed computing) as well as applications and methods for utilizing that data (eg, decision support, data mining, artificial intelligence, Bayesian networks).
Bio
Jeffrey Klann believes that technology can and should have the same positive impact in the medical world it has in the consumer world and that the nation's massive investment in Health Information Technology should translate into accelerated innovation and discovery and improved quality, efficiency, and safety of health care.
Caroline Perrin Franck, PhD
Geneva Digital Health Hub (gdhub), University of Geneva, Switzerland
Research Focus
Caroline Perrin Franck's research focuses on approaches to digital health knowledge management, implementation sciences, and the impact evaluation of digital health.
Bio
Caroline Perrin Franck is the Executive Director of the Geneva Digital Health Hub (gdhub) and Scientific Collaborator at the University of Geneva. She is leading the development and implementation of a data-driven digital health insights platform. Prior, as Program Manager for the RAFT distance education and telemedicine network, and for the Geneva University Hospitals eHealth service, she focused on the design, development, deployment, and evaluation of innovative health informatics solutions and multi-stakeholder partnerships to strengthen health systems. She holds a Master's in IT Management and a PhD in Global Health from the University of Geneva.
Past Editorial Board Members
Juliana Brixey, RN, MSN, MPH, PhD
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, School of Biomedical Informatics/School of Nursing, USA
Research Focus
Juliana Brixey’s research focuses on virtual reality, online education, and interruptions in workflow.
Bio
Juliana Brixey completed her PhD in Health Informatics from the School of Health Information Sciences, University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. Upon completion of her doctoral studies, she joined the faculty at the University of Kansas School of Nursing where she taught nursing informatics courses. Notably, Juliana introduced the use of Web 2.0 technologies in the nursing informatics curriculum. In June 2010, Juliana returned to the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Biomedical Informatics. She has teaching responsibilities in the Master’s in Applied Health Informatics program. Juliana has introduced the use of Web 2.0 technologies in the Master’s in Applied Informatics curriculum.
Iain Buchan, MD, FFPH, FACMI, FFCI
University of Liverpool, UK
Research Focus
Iain Buchan’s research focuses on (1) clinical research informatics, including the e-infrastructure for this, trustworthy reuse of health data at scale, and distributed statistical/epidemiological modelling; (2) public health informatics, covering all aspects of "population level uses of electronic health records"; and (3) usefully complex models at the interface of n-of-1 understanding of individual health and clinical epidemiology. Supporting co-production of care, with emphasis on informed self-care.
Bio
Iain Buchan is Chair in Public Health and Clinical Informatics and Associate Pro Vice Chancellor for Innovation at the University of Liverpool. As a public health physician and data scientist, he recently led the world-first evaluation of mass rapid antigen testing, risk-mitigated reopening of mass events for UK COVID-19 responses, and designed the Civic Data Cooperative and Combined Intelligence for Population Health Action. Previously, he founded the University of Manchester’s Centre for Health Informatics and generated over £150m of research there. He has been working at the interface of data and health sciences for over 30 years. Qualified in pharmacology, medicine, public health, statistics, and informatics. He is a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and won the 2022 UK Faculty of Public Health Alwyn-Smith Prize.
Claudia Pagliari, PhD, FRCPE
Medical School, The University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Research Focus
Claudia Pagliari’s research focuses on new data streams (remote monitoring, crowdsourced data, data linkage) for better care coordination, research, and policy. She also studies the ethical, societal, and regulatory implications of emerging digital health innovations, as well as factors influencing their effectiveness and sustainability.
Bio
Claudia Pagliari is a senior lecturer (associate professor) in health informatics at the University of Edinburgh, UK, where she leads the Interdisciplinary Research Group in eHealth, the Master's programme in Global eHealth and the consumer informatics theme of the NHS Digital Academy. She is an interdisciplinary scientist whose research spans many areas of health informatics, including policy studies, health technology evaluation, implementation science, user-centred design and digital governance. This includes studies of electronic health records, e-government programmes, consumer digital health and personal health records, remote telehealth and mHealth, social media and social robots, eHealth in low-resource settings and emerging directions in health data science.
Carlos Luis Parra Calderón, PhD
Technological Innovation, Virgen del Rocío University Hospital, Spain
School Computer Engineering, University of Seville, Spain
Research Focus
Carlos Luis Parra Calderón’s research interests are clinical research, data mining, and information security.
Bio
Carlos Luis Parra Calderón has an economics degree and Master of Research in Industrial Organization from the University of Seville. He is the Head of Innovation Technology at “Virgen Macarena” and “Virgen del Rocío” University Hospitals. Over the last 5 years, he has published 31 review articles and 2 book chapters. He is a member of the EHR WG of HL7, member of the Board of the Spanish Society of Health Informatics, and a representative of this organization in the European Federation in Medical Informatics (MIE 2015 LOC Chair), a member of AENOR TC 139 of “Medical Informatics” corresponding to CEN TC251 and ISO TC 215, and also a member of the Board of Andalusian Health Informatics Professionals Association (APISA). He has participated in the following European projects with a high focus on interoperability: epSOS (CIP Call 6), Trillium Bridge (FP7-ICT-2013-5.1 e4) and eHealth: REWIRE (FP7-ICT-2011-5.1) Health@Home (AAL 2008) and European COST Action IS1303:CHIP ME.