Dr. Leslie A. Lenert, MS, MD, FACMI, is the Chief Research Information Officer at MUSC, Chief Medical Information Officer at Health Sciences South Carolina, Director of the Biomedical Informatics Center and SmartState Endowed Chair. He is a practicing primary care physician with a 20-year history of research and development work in informatics and predictive analytics. He was a pioneer (1990’s) in development of web-based systems for patient use and online research studies. In response to 9/11 attacks, Dr. Lenert led a team of engineers and computer scientists that developed the first wireless “location aware” EHR system for first responders, including the world’s first WiFi pulse oximeter and electronic triage tag, obtaining more than 4 million dollars in Federal funding. In 2007, Dr. Lenert became the founding Director of the National Center for Public Health Informatics at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). There he managed the development of key national biodefense computer systems, including BioSense (which merged real time emergency room data from hundreds of hospitals) and Nationally Notifiable Disease Surveillance System. He also led efforts to integrate public health data systems with the Nationwide Health Information Network.

Currently, he researches approaches to help make health care safer and patient-centric through the application of cognitive modeling and predictive analytics.

Dr. Lenert has published extensively on the application of data mining methods to medicine. An internationally recognized expert in informatics, he is a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and sits on the editorial boards of three leading journals in the field.