VUSN’s Betsy Weiner, PhD, RN, senior associate dean for Informatics, was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) last fall. 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.
Weiner, Centennial Independence Foundation Professor of Nursing and professor of Biomedical Informatics, is considered 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. Weiner is a fellow of both the American Medical Informatics Association and the American Academy of Nursing. She joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 2000 after 21 years at the University of Cincinnati.
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.
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 addition to Weiner, Mark Frisse, MD, MS, MBA, Accenture Professor and director of Regional Informatics, was also elected to the IOM. Among his many accolades, Frisse led development of a government-sponsored health information exchange in the greater Memphis area and is a principal contributor of the Vanderbilt MyHealthTeam initiative, which won a three-year, $18.8 million Health Care Innovation Award from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.