The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), the leading professional association for biomedical and health informatics professionals, will honor Joanna Abraham, PhD, with the New Investigator Award at AMIA’s Annual Symposium, November 16-20 in Washington, D.C.
This prestigious award recognizes an individual for early informatics contributions and significant scholarly contributions based on scientific merit and research excellence.
“We congratulate Dr. Abraham on receiving this esteemed award,” said Michael Avidan, MBBCh, Dr. Seymour and Rose T. Brown Professor of Anesthesiology and Head of the Department of Anesthesiology. “This recognition is a wonderful honor and we’re very fortunate to have her as part of our department.”
Dr. Joanna Abraham is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and at the Institute for Informatics (I2) at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. She is an interdisciplinary researcher with training in computer science, biomedical informatics, and human-centered design.
Dr. Abraham’s research program targets the development of collaborative systems to deliver coordinated and safer care. Her research focuses on streamlining clinical workflows in a variety of domains, including handoffs and care transitions, care coordination, clinical decision making, and medication ordering. In these domains, her research emphasizes the design and evaluation of health information technologies for continuous and sustained improvements to patient safety.
Centered on techniques of working “in the clinical wild,” Abraham’s research translates these techniques into applied products that are meaningful for healthcare practice, and into novel theoretical and methodological frameworks that can drive the direction for future research.
Dr. Abraham has received an AMIA distinguished paper award and research mentoring awards at previous institutions and has also served on a special task force on handoffs and care transitions for the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. Currently, she chairs the AMIA Diana Forsythe Awards committee, sits on the editorial board of JAMIA Open, and has participated in multiple scientific program committees for AMIA, Human Factors in Healthcare and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. Her research is supported by extramural funds from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Science Foundation.
She earned her PhD from Pennsylvania State University. Before Washington University, she was at the University of Illinois at Chicago, The New York Academy of Medicine, and the University of Texas Health Science Center.