INDIANAPOLIS -- William Tierney, M.D., a physician researcher who has made major contributions to the delivery of health care in the United States, Kenya and a growing number of other African countries, has been elected a member of the prestigious Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Tierney is an IUPUI Chancellor's Professor and director of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics of the Department of Medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine. He is a senior investigator in the Regenstrief Institute where he studies the effects of innovative, computer-based interventions to improve health care quality and lower costs of health care delivery.
Dr. Tierney is also the director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's National Resource Center for Practice-Based Research Networks (PBRNs) that now supports 87 primary care research networks. These networks include more than 10,000 physicians and 20 million patients in 46 states across the U.S.
Dr. Tierney is also director of research for the Indiana University-Kenya Program where he is responsible for a ground-breaking HIV/AIDS research program in collaboration with Moi University in Eldoret, Kenya.
The author of frequently cited studies at the intersection of medical informatics and health services research, Dr. Tierney leads the team of Americans and Kenyans that implemented the first and most successful outpatient electronic medical record system in sub-Saharan Africa. This system, the AMPATH Medical Records System (AMRS), builds upon the knowledge acquired in the development of the Regenstrief Medical Record System. AMRS contains more than 350,000 visit records for more than 35,000 patients receiving care in 18 urban and rural primary care and HIV clinics in Kenya. AMRS is currently being implemented in Tanzania and Uganda and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. Using data from AMRS and other electronic medical record systems, Dr. Tierney co-directs the National Institute of Health's epidemiologic reporting center for HIV/AIDS for all of East Africa.
Dr. Tierney has been awarded more than $15 million in grants from federal agencies, research foundations, and private industry and has published more than 230 articles in peer-reviewed journals. In addition to informatics-based health services research, he has also performed dozens of epidemiologic studies for the public and private sectors utilizing the clinical data stored in clinical data repositories created by Regenstrief, Wishard Memorial Hospital, and Indiana University in Indianapolis and Kenya.
Dr. Tierney is co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of General Internal Medicine and a past-president of the Society of General Internal Medicine. Among his many honors, he was named an elder of the Nandi tribe of Mosoriot, Kenya in 2002.
Dr. Tierney is a graduate of Indiana University, where he also attended medical school and completed his residency. He was an informatics fellow at the Regenstrief Institute in 1980-82.
Established in 1970 as a unit of the National Academy of Sciences, the IOM is concerned with the protection and advancement of the health professions and sciences, the promotion of research and development pertinent to health, and the improvement of health care.
Other current and emeriti IUSM faculty who are IOM members are Morris Green, M.D., Thomas Inui, M.D., Clement McDonald, M.D., and Richard Miyamoto, M.D.