October 20, 2021

VUMC’s Were, Sengstack, Stead honored by ACMI

Vanderbilt’s Martin Were, MD, MS, and Patricia Sengstack, DNP, RN-BC, have been elected to the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI). William Stead, MD, has been named a Distinguished Fellows of ACMI.

Vanderbilt’s Martin Were, MD, MS

by Mia Garcitorena

Vanderbilt’s Martin Were, MD, MS, and Patricia Sengstack, DNP, RN-BC, are two of 11 fellows who were elected to the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI). William Stead, MD, is one of four senior fellows who were named Distinguished Fellows of ACMI.

The ACMI is an honorary college of more than 400 elected fellows from the U.S. and abroad who have made significant and sustained contributions to the field of medical informatics and who have met rigorous scholarly scrutiny by their peers.

Were, associate professor of Biomedical Informatics and Medicine, has developed, implemented and evaluated a range of digital health solutions for the global settings including mobile health applications for providers and patients, electronic health record systems, unique patient identification

Patricia Sengstack, DNP, RN-BC

approaches, and computerized clinical decision support systems, among others. He is also a practicing physician in internal medicine.

Sengstack, senior associate dean for Informatics at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing, Nursing Informatics Executive and professor of Biomedical Informatics, is a nationally known leader in nursing informatics. She has assisted multiple health care organizations in establishing informatics infrastructure, governance and processes to manage the complex organizational change introduced by advances in technology. She provides strategic informatics leadership at Vanderbilt, with a focus on health information technology’s impact on patient safety. She teaches informatics at both the master’s and doctoral levels at Vanderbilt’s School of Nursing.

William Stead, MD

Stead, McKesson Foundation Professor of Biomedical Informatics and professor of Medicine, is recognized internationally as one of the founders of biomedical informatics. He has built his career on envisioning the long-term potential of informatics and computation to transform health, biomedicine and research, and testing those ideas. He has served many other leadership roles throughout his career, including president of the ACMI, and received numerous awards, including being named the first recipient of the Donald A.B. Lindberg Award for Innovation in Informatics from the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) and the ACMI Morris F. Collen Award of Excellence.

He was named a Distinguished Fellow of ACMI for his significant and sustained contributions to the organization in areas such as policy formulation, the practice of informatics, and applied research.

Were, Sengstack and Stead will be honored during the 2021 AMIA Annual Symposium on Oct. 30 in San Diego.