Medical informatics expert to present lecture at Syracuse University Nov. 18

Medical informatics expert to present lecture at Syracuse University Nov. 18November 15, 2002Judy Holmesjlholmes@syr.edu

Ellen Gay Detlefsen of the Center for Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh will present “Medical Librarianship, Medical Informatics and the Informationist: Which Way Do We Go?” from noon to 1:30 p.m. Nov. 18 in Syracuse University’s Center for Science and Technology, Room 3-216. The presentation, sponsored by SU’s School of Information Studies, is free and open to the public.

Detlefsen is a faculty member in the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Information Sciences, with joint appointments in the Women’s Studies Program and the Center for Biomedical Informatics. She was educated at Smith College and Columbia University, and holds a doctorate from the Columbia University School of Library Service. Her areas of expertise and teaching include bio-medical and health sciences information; medical informatics and resources and services for special populations, such as patients and health care consumers; and the aging and their caregivers. The university’s program in medical librarianship and medical informatics, which she directs, was ranked first in the nation in the 1999 U.S. News & World Report’s Guide to Graduate Study.

Her on-going research interests include the information behaviors of health professionals and healthcare consumers, especially those who are elderly or from a minority group; the development of educational programs for health information specialists; and salary and career issues for the feminized professions. She is currently project director for the Highmark Minority Health Link initiative, which seeks to build minority-sensitive consumer health materials for healthcare consumers in the African-American communities of Western Pennsylvania.