Blackford Middleton, MD, MPH, MS

Blackford Middleton, MD, MBA, MS is Assistant Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs, Professor of Biomedical Informatics, and Professor of Medicine (with tenure) at Vanderbilt University. He is also adjunct faculty at the Technische Universität München, Graduate School of Information Science in Health, Munich, Germany, and at the Clinical Excellence Research Center at Stanford University.  In his role at Vanderbilt, he provides oversight and guidance for the informatics and information technology infrastructure to support the Vanderbilt University Health System, related education, and research activities, and conducts clinical informatics research.

Prior to joining Vanderbilt, he was Corporate Director of Clinical Informatics Research & Development (CIRD) at Partners Healthcare System, Boston, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and a Lecturer in Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health. He was Senior Vice President for Clinical Informatics, and Chief Medical Officer, for MedicaLogic/Medscape, a provider of electronic medical records software (Logician™), professional and patient portals (Medscsape.com, and AboutMyHealth.com) from 1995 to 2001. Prior to that position he was Medical Director of Information Management and Technology at Stanford University Medical Center, from 1992 to 1995. He has over 400 publications and invited national and international presentations on electronic and personal health records, clinical decision support, and related policy and technical issues. 

Currently, Dr. Middleton is a member of the Board of Directors at the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), and is Chairman 2014-15.  He serves on the National Advisory Committee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Aligning Forces for Quality program (Dr. Mark McClellan, Chair). He also serves on several Editorial Boards. He served as a member of the National Quality Forum Health IT Advisory Council (HITAC) from 2010-12, and on the Board of Stewardship Trustees for the Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) health system (and Quality, and Strategy sub-committees of the Board) from 2006-12, and the Board of Directors of the CHI Institute for Research and Innovation from 2009-12. Middleton was appointed by US Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt to serve on the National Committee of Vital and Health Statistics (NCHVS) and served from 2008-12 on the Quality Committee (Co-Chair), and Population NCVHS sub-committees. He was a co-founder of the Institute for Decision Systems Research in Palo Alto, CA in 1994, and of the Center for Information Technology Leadership (C!TL) at Partners in 2002 and led its research in value-based technology assessment until 2010. He is past Treasurer of the American Telemedicine Association, and the American College of Medical Informatics, and past Chairman of the Computer-based Patient Record Institute (CPRI, 2000), and past Chairman of the Healthcare Information Management & Systems Society (HIMSS, 2005).

Dr. Middleton was recognized by Modern Physician as one of the Top 50 (#36) most powerful US physician executives in 2005, and by Modern Healthcare as one of the top 300 influential people in Healthcare in 2008. Dr. Middleton was recognized by Modern Healthcare as one of the US Top 25 Clinical Informaticists in 2010. Dr. Middleton received the SUNY-Buffalo Medical Alumni Achievement Award – “Presented in honor of your extraordinary accomplishments and leadership in the field of medicine” in 2010.He was recognized in 2011 as one of HIMSS 50 in 50: 50 individuals who “have made recognized, lasting, and influential contributions to the theory, adoption, and use of healthcare information and management systems” in HIMSS 50 year history. Dr. Middleton is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American College of Medical Informatics, and of HIMSS.