Asif Ahmad provides leadership, direction, and strategic planning for the information technology staff and functions in support of the Health System. As the Vice President Diagnostic Services he is responsible for developing the overall strategy of diagnostic support for DUHS. Additionally, Mr. Ahmad is responsible for overseeing the Health Information Management group for the health system.

Jeffrey Ferranti, M.D., M.S., Clinical Associate in Pediatrics, Director of Pediatric Informatics, Director of Computerized Patient Safety Initiatives

Dr. Ferranti provides physician leadership to support the ongoing development and implementation of pediatric information systems throughout the health system. He is the clinical leader of the pediatric CPOE project, and is responsible for developing and implementing computerized safety metrics to evaluate the impact of technology on the care of children. He is also responsible for the strategic planning of IT initiatives related to Adverse Drug Event surveillance and computerized patient safety initiatives. He is the principle investigator of an AHRQ grant entitiled "Automated Adverse Drug Event Detection and Intervention."
 
William Hammond, Ph.D., Professor of Community and Family Medicine and Biomedical Engineering

Dr. Hammond oversees research in the Division of Medical Informatics that focuses on the creation and dissemination of health care data and with related knowledge. Areas of investigation include networking, database structures, query languages, report generation, decision support, standards for healthcare data interchange, and workstations. Research takes place in the context of creating computer-based patient records and using those records for patient care, research education, administration, and finance. Students working in this laboratory observe and participate in a full range of activities from hardware and software to testing systems in biomedical application areas. A typical project involves the analysis of alternative approaches, creation of a new informatics tool, and use and evaluation of the effectiveness of that tool in solving an application problem in a real world setting.

 

The Medical Informatics division is home of the Duke half of the Duke/­UNC Training Program in Medical Informatics, one of ten such grant programs supported by the National Library of Medicine. This interdisciplinary program draws on 25 years of research experience in medical informatics and nearly as many years of experience with operational computer-based patient record systems at Duke. Resources include various Digital Equipment Corporation VAX computers and a Microsoft NT network connected to the Medical Center fiber backbone. In addition, these computers are connected to an IBM 3090 mainframe running a hospital information system. Areas of development include an intensive care setting, regional obstetrical databases, and primary care setting.