CTSI is pleased to announce the appointment of Steve Johnson, PhD, as Scientific Director, CTSI Clinical Informatics Services and Collaborative Science and Gretchen Sieger as Director of Operations, Clinical Informatics Services.
Both will focus their efforts on CTSI’s Best Practices Integrated Informatics Core (BPIC), which provides informatics services and collaborative science opportunities to support research. Both roles report to Constantin Aliferis, MD, MS, PhD, FACMI, Chief Research Informatics Officer.
Steve Johnson, Scientific Director, CTSI Clinical Informatics Services and Collaborative Science
As Scientific Director, CTSI Clinical Informatics Services and Collaborative Science, Dr. Johnson will support faculty and researchers in applying informatics in their research and leveraging the CTSI's clinical data repository.
Dr. Johnson replaces Ahmad AbuSalah, PhD, MSc, who is now the Healthcare Informatics and Intelligence Officer in the CIO office at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, one of the largest tertiary hospitals in the Middle East. I’d like to thank Dr. AbuSalah for his leadership, and wish him well in his new venture. He remains an affiliate faculty member with the UMN Institute for Health Informatics (IHI).
Dr. Johnson is an Assistant Professor in the Institute for Health Informatics, where he also directs the Division for Informatics Innovation Dissemination. Dr. Johnson has had an extensive career in the healthcare industry with a successful record of leading technology, product development, and data analytics teams.
Prior to joining IHI, Dr. Johnson served as VP of Technology and Clinical Informatics at Wolters Kluwer, where he oversaw product development and medical content for clinical documentation and clinical decision support products. Prior to that, he was Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and VP of Data Analytics for Experian Health where he oversaw technology and architecture for all healthcare products, including data and analytics for a data repository of more than 150 million patients. He was also co-founder of a healthcare startup that was acquired in 2008.
Dr. Johnson received a PhD in health informatics and an MS in computer science from the University of Minnesota.
Gretchen Sieger, BPIC Director of Operations
Gretchen Sieger has been named Director of Operations after five years serving in various roles within CTSI’s informatics consulting service. Previously Gretchen was a Lead Data Analyst and Manager of the BPIC Data Analyst team. In this new, expanded role, she is responsible for planning, coordinating, implementing, and overseeing the daily operations of BPIC and provides leadership in the development of clinical informatics initiatives that advance the mission of CTSI to accelerate discoveries toward better health.
Gretchen has been a part of the University of Minnesota's Health Sciences research community since 2001 and has previous experience both as a Certified Clinical Research Coordinator and Data Analyst.