John T. Finnell, M.D., M.Sc.
- Director and Associate Professor, Health Informatics
- Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine, School of Medicine
- Research Scientist, Regenstrief Institute
Biography
John T. (JT) Finnell, MD, MSc, wears many hats in addition to his role as director and associate professor of the Health Informatics program at the School of Informatics. Dr. Finnell is associate professor of emergency medicine, director of the IU School of Medicine’s informatics division, and a research scientist at the Regenstrief Institute. He is also principal investigator of an ONC-funded grant entitled “Indiana Health Information Technology Training Collaborative.”
Dr. Finnell first joined the Regenstrief Institute in 2002 as an NLM-funded medical informatics fellow. During his fellowship, Dr. Finnell earned a master’s degree in the NIH-funded CITE program. His research activities focused on building the infrastructure necessary to capture emergency department visit data. The departmental tracking system known as “WizErD” began capturing visit data on July 15, 2003.
His first publication, entitled “Community Clinical Data Exchange for Emergency Medicine Patients,” explored the pattern of emergency healthcare delivery across Indianapolis over a one year period. The study found that one-fourth of the emergency department patients with more than one visit also visited one of the other five hospital systems, and showing that these patients could potentially benefit the most from a shared clinical data network.
