Welcome to the Division of Clinical Informatics at BIDMC
About DCI: The Division of Clinical Informatics (DCI), created in 1970 by Dr. Howard Bleich and Dr. Warner Slack, was among the first academic divisions in the world to concentrate on the use of computers for patient care, teaching, and medical research. The goals of the Division have been to improve the relationship between doctor and patient, enhance medical education, improve quality, and reduce costs. DCI has had three faculty members receive the prestigious Morris F. Collen Award from the American Medical Informatics Association, and four fellows elected into the American College Medical Informatics. Learn more about our history.
Research: Current research includes the design and evaluation of clinical information systems, translational research platforms, patient portals, and patient engagement, quality improvement processes and analytics, clinical decision support systems, online learning systems, mobile health applications, global e-health applications. Learn about DCI-developed applications.
Education: The Division hosts a variety of a wide range of training programs, from internships, to fellowships, to international industrial programs. If you are a US physician, read more about the Clinical Informatics Fellowship At Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) Clinical Informatics Fellowship is a two-year, ACGME-accredited program (Accreditation ID: 1392414001) that has trained leaders in healthcare informatics for over 40 years. Fellows gain hands-on experience within one of the world’s leading clinical computing environments, learning to assess clinician and patient needs, refine workflows, and design innovative health IT systems. Complementing this, the Pharmacy Clinical Informatics Summer Internship prepares future pharmacy informatics leaders through exposure to population health and data-driven care, open to PharmD students in ACPE-accredited programs. Harvard Medical School students may participate through the ME530M.1 Clinical Informatics elective
Honors and Awards: In 2025, Dr. Charles Safran received the prestigious IMIA François Grémy Award, the highest lifetime achievement honor in medical informatics, recognizing his outstanding contributions to advancing the field through research, education, and global leadership. Dr. Alexa McCray, a pioneering informatics scholar, was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2001 for her exceptional professional achievements and impact on health policy and research. Previous recipients of the Morris F. Collen Award—the American College of Medical Informatics’ highest distinction—include Dr. Safran (2014) and DCI co-founders Drs. Howard Bleich and Warner Slack (2001). In addition, Dr. Yuri Quintana was elected as a 2025 Fellow of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI), joining Drs. Safran and McCray as internationally recognized leaders in biomedical informatics. Many DCI faculty and alumni, including Drs. Quintana, Halamka, McCray, and Slack, are also Fellows of the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI), underscoring the division’s enduring legacy of leadership and innovation in the field. Learn more.
Dr. Charles Safran Honored with IMIA François Grémy Award
Dr. Yuri Quintana Elected Fellow of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics
Learn more about IMIA Society, IASHI, and MedInfo Conferences
2025 Pharmacy Clinical Informatics Internship Program
Apply by August 15, 2025! Details here.
About the DCI 2025 AI Conference
The "Signal Through The Noise: What Works, What Lasts, and What Matters In Healthcare AI" conference aims to bring together healthcare professionals, researchers, policymakers, ethicists, and industry leaders to explore the latest breakthroughs, challenges, and prospects of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in medicine. This conference aims to define what we mean by value and ROI in AI in healthcare. We aim to foster collaboration, encourage the exchange of ideas, and facilitate networking among diverse stakeholders to stimulate innovation and ensure AI's responsible and ethical integration in the medical field. The event runs Sept. 25-27, 2025 with a course day (Sept 25th) to lay foundational principles and methods, a panel day (Sept 26) to share and discuss viewpoints from thought leaders, and a workshop day (Sept 27th) to generate a focused plan for measure value and ethics in AI. 2025 DCI AI Conference - Details here
The DCI Network
The DCI Network aims to accelerate solutions to complex healthcare problems that require multi-stakeholder collaborations by creating new consortia and roadmaps to fund and implement breakthrough initiatives.
Many of today’s challenges, such as real-world evidence, distributed clinical trials, multi-institutional data Linking, and new privacy standards, will require public-private collaborations. The pandemic has shown that improvements to health care cannot move quickly without coordinated efforts. Innovations that can’t be deployed at scale are a loss to the health and business sectors. We aim to drive efficiencies in the R&D process and healthcare delivery through more integrated data sharing and multi-stakeholder collaborations.