Edward H. Shortliffe
Edward H. Shortliffe is a physician and biomedical-informatics researcher. He developed MYCIN within Stanford’s medical-AI program and earned his doctorate in 1975 and medical degree in 1976. His publications documented medical consultation and expert-system experiments, including shared books with William Clancey and Bruce Buchanan. He served on Stanford’s faculty from 1979 to 2000 and led its informatics training program. He later chaired Columbia’s department and led AMIA from 2009 to 2012.
Timeline
-
1970–1976
Medical training and expert-system research
Shortliffe earned a Harvard degree in 1970, a Stanford doctorate in medical information sciences in 1975 and a medical degree in 1976. He was the principal developer of MYCIN in the early 1970s. The work took place within a larger Stanford research program.
-
1976–1984
Writing about medical AI
He published Computer-Based Medical Consultations: MYCIN in 1976 and coauthored two medical-AI volumes in 1984. One was with William Clancey, and the MYCIN experiments volume was with Bruce Buchanan. These publications documented research in medical consultation and rule-based expert systems.
-
1979–2000
Stanford informatics and decision support
After clinical residency training, Shortliffe joined Stanford’s internal-medicine faculty in 1979. He worked on clinical information systems and decision support and led a graduate training program from 1982 to 2000. He combined medical teaching with research on how computing could support decisions.
-
2000–2012
Institutional and professional leadership
Shortliffe chaired Columbia’s biomedical-informatics department from 2000 to 2007. He served as AMIA president and chief executive from July 2009 through March 2012.
Sources and credits
Photo: uottawa.ca; Shortliffe, Edward | About us; creator not stated. License: Not stated by source. Source: uottawa.ca. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.