Dr. Shortliffe grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, until his family moved to Connecticut when he was 6. He attended the Loomis School in Connecticut and later Gresham’s School in the UK. His father was a physician and hospital administrator; his mother, an English teacher. He has one brother and one sister.

As an undergraduate at Harvard, he started working in the computer laboratory of G. Octo Barnett at Massachusetts General Hospital and realized that he could have a career spanning both medicine and computing.

After receiving an AB in applied mathematics magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1970, he received an MD (1976) and PhD in Medical Information Systems (1975) from Stanford University, with a dissertation on the MYCIN system, for which he also won the 1976 Grace Murray Hopper award for outstanding young computer scientist. He completed internal medicine house-staff training from 1976-1979 at Massachusetts General Hospital and Stanford Hospital. In 1979 he joined the Stanford faculty of medicine and computer science, where he directed the Stanford University Medical EXpertimental computer resource (SUMEX) and subsequently the Center for Advanced Medical Informatics at Stanford (CAMIS), continuing his work on expert systems, including ONCOCIN (an oncology decision support program), T-HELPER, and other projects in the Stanford Heuristic Programming Project. He also simultaneously served as Chief of General Internal Medicine and Associate Chair of Medicine for Primary Care, and was principal investigator of the InterMed Collaboratory, which developed the science of computable guidelines for medical decision support.

In 1980 he founded one of the earliest formal degree programs in biomedical informatics at Stanford University, emphasizing a rigorous and experimentalist approach. He is known for his administrative ability, dedication to teaching and ability to create scientific and educational environments where (in the words of NLM director Donald A. B. Lindberg) 'smart people want to come’. He has been widely influential in the development and public awareness of biomedical informatics as a field and trained many students who went on to be leaders in the study of uncertainty and AI, and other areas. He is also much in demand as a speaker and advisor to government and industry. Since 2003 he has served on the Board of Directors of Medco Health Solutions, a large pharmacy benefits manager headquartered in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey.

In 2000 he moved to Columbia University as chair of the department of Biomedical Informatics, Deputy Vice President (Columbia University Medical Center), Senior Associate Dean (College of Physicians and Surgeons) for Strategic Information Resources, Professor of Medicine, Professor of Computer Science, and Director of Medical Informatics Services for the New York-Presbyterian Hospital (NYPH). He continued work on decision support guidelines including the development of the Guideline Interchange Format (GLIF3). He greatly expanded the faculty and scope of department activities, including overseeing the development of patient care systems at NYPH, basic science research, and expanded training programs in biomedical informatics, including public health informatics, the integration of bioinformatics and clinical informatics, and the introduction of informatics training for medical students.

At age 39, Dr. Shortliffe was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences (where he has served on the IOM executive council). He is also a member of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, and the American Clinical and Climatological Association.

He is a founding member of the American Medical Informatics Association and was one of five founding fellows of the American College of Medical Informatics. He is a Master of the American College of Physicians (ACP) and was a member of that organization’s Board of Regents from 1996-2002. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Biomedical Informatics, and serves on the editorial boards for several other biomedical informatics publications.

He has served on the oversight committee for the Division of Engineering and Physical Sciences (National Academy of Sciences) and the Biomedical Informatics Expert Panel (National Center for Research Resources at the National Institutes of Health). He also recently served on the National Committee for Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS) and on the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC). Earlier he served on the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (National Research Council), the Biomedical Library Review Committee (National Library of Medicine), and was recipient of a research career development award from the latter agency.

He is the author of more than 300 publications including seven books, one of which (Biomedical Informatics, now in its third edition) is considered the leading textbook in the field.

• Morris F. Collen Award for Distinguished Contributions to Medical Informatics, American Medical Informatics Association, November 2006

• Appointed Rolf H. Scholdager Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University, June 2005

• National Associate, National Academies, Washington, DC, December 2004.

• Mastership, American College of Physicians, November 2002

• Young Investigator Award, Western Society for Clinical Investigation, February 1987.

• Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Faculty Scholar in General Internal Medicine, July 1983...June 1988.

• Research Career Development Award, National Library of Medicine, July 1979...June 1984.

• Grace Murray Hopper Award (Distinguished computer scientist under age 30), Association for Computing Machinery, October 1976.

• Medical Scientist Training Program, Traineeship, September 1971 - June 1976.

Books

1. Shortliffe, E.H. Computer-Based Medical Consultations: MYCIN, Elsevier/North Holland, New York, 1976.Japanese language version by Bunkodo Blue Books, Tokyo, 1981 (translated by T. Kaminuma).

2. Buchanan, B.G. and Shortliffe, E.H. (eds). Rule-Based Expert Systems: The MYCIN Experiments of the Stanford Heuristic Programming Project. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1984.

3. Clancey, W.J. and Shortliffe, E.H. (eds). Readings in Medical Artificial Intelligence: The First Decade. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1984.

4. Shortliffe, E.H. and Perreault, L., (eds), Wiederhold, G., and Fagan, L.M. (assoc. eds.). Medical Informatics: Computer Applications in Health Care. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1990.

5. Shortliffe, E.H., Wulfman, C.E., Rindfleisch, T.C., and Carlson, R.W. An Integrated Oncology Workstation. Bethesda, MD: National Cancer Institute, 1991. [Received the 1991-92 Award of Excellence from The Society for Technical Communication.]

6. Shortliffe, E.H. and Perreault, L. (eds), Wiederhold, G., and Fagan, L.M. (assoc. eds.). Medical Informatics: Computer Applications in Health Care and Biomedicine. New York: Springer-Verlag, 2000. (2nd edition of #4, new publisher and title).

7. Shortliffe, E.H. (ed) and Cimino, J.J. (assoc. ed.). Biomedical Informatics: Computer Applications in Health Care and Biomedicine. New York: Springer-Verlag, 2006. (3rd edition of #5).

Journal Articles

• Google Scholar citations
• Medline (PubMed) Publications