New professor of health informatics appointed

“The establishment of this new professorial chair in health Informatics is a vital strategic investment for Karolinska Institutet. There is a tremendous digital development within the health care system today, that creates new demands and new opportunities,” says Professor Jan Carlstedt-Duke, Dean of Research at KI.

Björn Bergh is currently Professor of Medical Informatic Systems and Head of Information Technology and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Heidelberg, in Germany. He has led the construction there of an ultramodern infrastructure and information exchange relating to patient care and research. In his new role at the Health Informatics Centre (HIC), he will be concentrating more on research to find ways of “recycling” the information in the current computerised case records system.

“There is a range of different fields of usage; everything from purely epidemiological studies to comparing different patient groups in terms of drug use or assessing why one clinic gets much better results than another,” says Professor Göran Elinder, chairman of the working group for the new professorial chair.

The chair in health Informatics at KI is the second in Sweden. Linköping University has previously made a similar commitment. The Health Informatics Centre will be the latest in a long line of successful collaborations on patient-based research between KI and Stockholm County Council. Professor Bergh commences his new post in Stockholm on 1 April 2007.

“Björn Bergh has the right qualifications, both as a researcher and a leader, to get a new venture going in a field where major changes take place rapidly. Karolinska Institutet’s training programme in health Informatics also guarantees good access to competent staff,” says Jan Carlstedt-Duke.