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Faculty Detail    
Name JAMES CIMINO
Director, Informatics Insitute		  
Campus Address THT 100
Phone  (205) 996-1958
E-mail  ciminoj@uab.edu
Other websites
     

Education
Undergraduate  Brown Universtiy    1977  ScB 
Graduate  New York Medical College    1981  MD 
Residency  St. Vincent's Medical Center, New York, NY    1984  Residency in Internal Medicine 
Fellowship  Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital    1988  Fellowship in Medical Informatics 

Certifications
Internal Medicine  1984 
Clinical Informatics  2015 


Faculty Appointment(s)
Appointment Type Department Division Rank
Primary    Professor Distinguished
Secondary  Computer Science  Computer Science Professor
Secondary  Health Services Administration Chair Office  Health Services Administration Chair Office Professor
Secondary  Med - General Internal Medicine  Med - General Internal Medicine Professor
Secondary  Nursing Acad Affairs  Nursing Acad Affairs Professor
Center  Center for Outcomes & Effectiveness Res & Educ  Center for Outcomes & Effectiveness Res & Educ Professor Distinguished
Center  Comprehensive Cancer Center  Comprehensive Cancer Center Professor Distinguished
Center  Ctr for Clinical & Translational Sci  Ctr for Clinical & Translational Sci Professor Distinguished
Center  Informatics Institute  Informatics Institute Professor Distinguished

Graduate Biomedical Sciences Affiliations
Genetics, Genomics and Bioinformatics 

Biographical Sketch 
Dr. James Cimino is a board certified internist who completed a National Library of Medicine informatics fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University and then went on to an academic position at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Presbyterian Hospital in New York. He spent 20 years at Columbia, carrying out clinical informatics research, building clinical information systems, teaching medical informatics and medicine, and caring for patients, rising to the rank of full professor in both Biomedical Informatics and Medicine. His principle research areas there included desiderata for controlled terminologies, mobile and Web-based clinical information systems for clinicians and patients, and a context-aware form of clinical decision support called “infobuttons”. In 2008, he moved to the National Institutes of Health, where he was the Chief of the Laboratory for Informatics Development and a Tenured Investigator at the NIH Clinical Center and the National Library of Medicine. His principle project involved the development of the Biomedical Translational Research Information System (BTRIS), an NIH-wide clinical research data resource. In 2015, he left NIH to be the inaugural Director of the Informatics Institute at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The Institute is charged with improving informatics research, education, and service across the University, supporting the Personalized Medicine Institute, the Center for Genomic Medicine, and the University Health System Foundation, including improvement of and access to electronic health records. He holds the rank of Tenured Professor in Medicine, and is the Chief for the Informatics Section in the Division of General Internal Medicine. He continues to conduct research in clinical informatics and clinical research informatics, he has been director of the NLM's week-long Biomedical Informatics course (currently hosted by Georgia Regents University) for 16 years, and teaches at Columbia University and Georgetown University as an Adjunct Professor. He is co-editor (with Edward Shortliffe) of a leading textbook on Biomedical Informatics and is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Biomedical Informatics. His honors include Fellowships of the American College of Physicians, the New York Academy of Medicine and the American College of Medical Informatics (Past President), the Priscilla Mayden Award from the University of Utah, the Donald A.B. Lindberg Award for Innovation in Informatics and the President’s Award, both from the American Medical Informatics Association, the Medal of Honor from New York Medical College, the NIH Clinical Center Director’s Award (twice), and induction into the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine).

Society Memberships
Organization Name Position Held Org Link
American College of Physicians  Fellow  www.acponline.org 
American Medical Informatics Association  Fellow  www.amia.org 
National Academy of Medicine  Member  www.nam.edu 
New York Academy of Medicine  Fellow  www.nyam.org 
 



Research/Clinical Interest
Title
Reinventing the Electronic Health Record
Description
Current electronic health records (EHRs) are essentially computerized diaries, based on the data model of paper medical records combined with the transnational business model of health care. A new generation of EHRs is needed that model the patient's state, the patience care process, and the relationships between the two. New applications must be developed that make use of this model to support clinical decision making, while being integrated with existing EHRs in a seamless, nondistruptive manner.

Keywords
Informatics, electornic health records, computerized decision support