Martin Were, MD, MS
Dr. Martin Were is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, TN. He is also a Visiting Associate Professor and Founding Director of the Institute of Biomedical Informatics at Moi University (Kenya). He completed a B.A. in Biochemistry at Harvard University, went on to attend Harvard Medical School, and completed internal medicine residency training at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital & Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Were work focus is in global health informatics. He 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 approaches, and computerized clinical decision support systems, among others. He has also worked with on smartcard-based interoperable solutions for patient care. Dr. Were runs several capacity-building projects in Health informatics in East Africa with support from Norad and USAID, and has other projects in Mozambique, Uganda and Nigeria. In 2019, he led the harmonization of Masters in Health Informatics curricula for universities in the East African region. He is currently working with the Kenyan Ministry of Health to evaluate the implementation status of the nationally rolled-out electronic record systems and the security status of these systems.
Dr. Were has previously served as the co-chair of the mHealth Alliance Evidence Working Group and on the Board of Scientific Counselors at the Lister Hill Center of the National Library of Medicine (NIH). He has also served on the World Health Organization’s mHealth Technical Advisory Group.