Don E. Detmer - Biography and Career

Biography and Career

Don Detmer chaired the 1991 study, "The Computer-based Patient Record". He was a member of the committee that developed the IOM Reports, "To Err is Human" and "Crossing the Quality Chasm." From 1999-2003 he was the Dennis Gillings Professor of Health Management at Cambridge University and is a lifetime member of Clare Hall College, Cambridge.

Considered to be a mover of the US National Health Information Infrastructure, Dr. Detmer has also been a consultant to the government of England and the Hospital Authority of Hong Kong. Prior to the years in England, he was Vice President for Health Sciences at the Universities of Virginia and Utah. While at Virginia he led implementation of a physician order entry system and was principal investigator of its IAIMS grant. While at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he developed the nation’s first Administrative Medicine Program, a Master’s degree program for clinician-executives. As a surgeon, he was instrumental in the adoption and development of ambulatory surgery in the early 1970s and was team physician for the Wisconsin Badgers for ten years while also serving as President of the Medical Staff. He won a UW–Madison Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award.

Detmer was appointed as President and CEO of the American Medical Informatics Association in 2004 until 2009 when he became Senior Advisor to AMIA until 2011.

Detmer's education includes a medical degree from the University of Kansas with subsequent training at the National Institutes of Health, the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Duke University Medical Center, the Institute of Medicine, and Harvard Business School. His MA is from the University of Cambridge.

Don's research interests include national health information policy, quality improvement, administrative medicine, vascular surgery, sports medicine, and management of academic health centers. He has written and edited a number of research articles, books, book chapters, and monographs on these topics. He enjoys grandchildren, horse riding, fly-fishing, reading biographies, and various crafts.