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UCSD professor elected to the National Academy of Medicine

UCSD professor elected to the National Academy of Medicine
Posted at 7:21 PM, Oct 15, 2018
and last updated 2018-10-15 22:21:14-04

SAN DIEGO (CNS) - A UC San Diego Health professor is one of 85 members in the health and medicine field elected to this year's class of the National Academy of Medicine, UCSD announced today.

Dr. Lucila Ohno-Machado is the chair and founder of UCSD's Department of Biomedical Informatics.

"Bioinformatics and big data are increasingly a foundation and driver of modern medicine. Lucila is an undisputed expert and pioneer in both," said Dr. David Brenner, UCSD's vice chancellor of health sciences. "Her leadership and dedication to scientific excellence make her an ideal NAM member. We are proud of the many research and education programs she has built here, helping UC San Diego remain a leader in these critical fields."

The 2018 academy class includes 75 regular members and 10 international members. Current members elect new members each year, focusing on medical professionals who have made significant contributions in the medical science, health care and public health fields. Academy members elected Ohno-Machado for her work creating an algorithm that allows medical professionals to share clinical data while maintaining a patient's privacy, according to the NAM.

Ohno-Machado is an informatics and technology professor at the School of Medicine and a founding member of the UCSD Halicioglu Data Science Institute. In addition to her work at UCSD, Ohno-Machado is a research health scientist for San Diego's Veterans Affairs healthcare system, co-leads the
California Precision Medicine Consortium and has procured grants totaling more than $100 million for UCSD. She is also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

"I'm proud of building a completely new department from the ground up-- it's been a big challenge, but it has come with big rewards," Ohno-Machado said. "I'm grateful to be able to do this work at UC San Diego, where we have the great advantage of being able to put our innovations into practice in our own health system, and I'm honored to receive this recognition for our work."

Ohno-Machado received her doctorate in Medical Information Sciences and Computer Science from Stanford University, her medical degree from the University of Sao Paulo and a master's degree in Healthcare Administration at Escola de Asministracao, Fundacao Getulio Vargas in Sao Paulo.