Vanderbilt University’s Betsy Weiner, Ph.D., R.N., senior associate dean for Informatics in the School of Nursing, and Mark Frisse, M.D., MS, MBA, Accenture Professor and director of Regional Informatics, have been elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the organization announced this week.
With more than 1,900 members, the IOM is the health arm of the National Academies, serving as an adviser to the nation to improve health and promote health-related research.
The National Academies, which also includes the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and National Research Council, are private nonprofit institutions that provide advice on some of the most pressing challenges facing the nation and the world.
Vanderbilt University now has 27 current faculty members who have been elected by their peers to the National Academies in recognition of excellence in their fields. Twenty are members of the IOM; seven others are members of the NAS or NAE.
“I am delighted by the opportunity to congratulate another two members of our faculty who have been elected into the Institute of Medicine,” said Jeff Balser, M.D., Ph.D., vice chancellor for Health Affairs and dean of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
“The inclusion of Drs. Weiner and Frisse serves as acknowledgment of their worthy contributions to the fields of health care and information technology, and is also reflective of Vanderbilt’s longstanding role as a leader in the development and implementation of new information technologies for education, clinical care and research.”
“The increasing presence of faculty from across our entire campus who are now members of the National Academies is something we should all take great pride in as we celebrate Vanderbilt’s rising national influence,” Balser said.
Both an honorific membership organization and an advisory organization, the IOM was established in 1970 by the National Academies and is recognized as a national resource for independent, scientifically informed analysis, providing recommendations on a broad range of health issues.
Weiner, Centennial Independence Foundation Professor of Nursing and professor of Biomedical Informatics, is considered to be a pioneer in multimedia development, particularly in the area of distance learning programs in nursing, and the informatics tools that tie together research, practice and academics.
“Membership in the IOM provides me with a unique opportunity to be a voice for nursing and informatics while introducing innovation and change,” Weiner said. “The inclusion of both Mark and me speaks to the strength of Vanderbilt’s informatics contributions. I am honored to receive the invitation.”
A board-certified registered nurse, (RN-BC), Weiner is a fellow of both the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) and the American Academy of Nursing. She joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 2000 after serving for 21 years at the University of Cincinnati.
Weiner received her B.S. degree in Nursing and her Ph.D. in Higher Education, Social & Philosophical Studies from the University of Kentucky, and an M.S. degree in Nursing from the University of Cincinnati.
Early in her career, she received one of the first IBM grants for innovative education to develop an informatics-based labor and delivery simulation that was used in nursing schools throughout the country.
Her later online education in emergency preparedness continues to be used by nurses worldwide, and led to her consulting internationally for the World Health Organization.
In 2008, Weiner received the AMIA’s Virginia K. Saba Informatics Award in recognition of her “substantial” contributions to the field of nursing informatics, and in 2011, she was appointed to the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Task Force on Delivery System Reform and Health Information Technology in Washington, D.C.
Frisse, also a professor of Biomedical Informatics, focuses on the intersection between health care informatics, economics, policy and health care transformation.
“My election to the Institute of Medicine speaks as much to the quality and culture of Vanderbilt University as it does to my own accomplishments,” he said.
“Our university is fairly unique in its ability to support faculty who seek to combine rigorous scholarship with an equally strong commitment to making a difference in our community.”
In Tennessee, Frisse led development and oversight of a six-year government sponsored effort to create and operate a health information exchange for the greater Memphis area. The exchange currently has more than 7 million records covering the care of more than 1.2 million people.
Frisse also is a principal contributor of the MyHealthTeam initiative, which won a three-year, $18.8 million Health Care Innovation Award from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in 2012 to improve chronic disease management for patients with high blood pressure, heart failure and diabetes.
A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Frisse received his M.D. and MBA from Washington University in St. Louis, where he also served as a professor of Medicine and associate dean of the School of Medicine. He received a Master’s Degree in Medical Information Science from Stanford University.
Prior to joining the Vanderbilt faculty in 2004, he served as Chief Medical Officer and Vice President of Clinical Information Services at Express Scripts, one of the nation’s largest independent pharmaceutical benefits management companies, and as vice president in First Consulting Group’s Clinical Transformation Practice, working to advance health care quality and safety.
