Dean Nancy Andrews, MD, PhD, and Jeffrey Ferranti, MD, MS, chief medical information officer, recently announced that Iain Sanderson, MD, will join DHTS and the School of Medicine as chief research and academic information officer in August. In this new role, Dr. Sanderson will oversee informatics as it relates to research, education and administration, and serve as the primary IT strategist for the School of Medicine.
Some of you may remember Iain, who spent 14 years at Duke as an associate professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, and four years as Associate Chief Information Officer for DUHS. He left in 2007 to become the Chief Medical Information Officer for Health Sciences South Carolina, where he led the effort to bring an integrated clinical and translational research infrastructure to the state’s research universities and health systems. He also rebuilt biomedical informatics into a cohesive and effective program at the Medical University of South Carolina for its successful Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA).Sanderson will use his expertise to provide leadership in biomedical informatics, research computing, education and technology innovation to support the academic and administrative needs of our research community. He will also engage with the clinical research enterprise while supporting the School’s activities and infrastructure. His familiarity with the Duke environment, and his tremendous expertise in clinical research IT, will be particularly valuable as we work to make Duke a national leader in research and academic informatics. See this 2005 article about Sanderson's role in developing ORView, a system that helped operating rooms at Duke run more efficiently.