Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics on
Healthcare Information Technology (CERT-HIT)

David W. Bates, MD, MSc
CERT-HIT Director and Cores' Leader

Dr. Bates is an internationally renowned expert in using information technology to improve clinical decision-making, patient safety, quality-of-care, cost-effectiveness, and outcomes assessment in medical practice .

A practicing general internist, Dr. Bates is Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he co-directs the Program in Clinical Effectiveness. He also serves as Medical Director of Clinical and Quality Analysis, Information Systems for Partners HealthCare System.

At a time when patient safety has become a key driver for focusing national attention on health-care quality,
Dr. Bates' work has not only shown the magnitude of the problem but also helped provide a blueprint for solving it. He led a seminal study on the epidemiology of drug-related injuries, demonstrating that the most effective
way to prevent serious medication errors is to focus on improving the systems. He has also performed many studies on how computerized, evidence-based guidelines can improve quality and efficiency.

Dr. Bates is a graduate of Stanford University , and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He began his fellowship in general internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in 1988, and he received an M.Sc. in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1990. He has been elected to the Institute of Medicine , the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians and the American College of Medical Informatics, and is chairman of the Board of the American Medical Informatics Association. He serves as external program lead for research in the World Health Organization's Global Alliance for Patient Safety. He is the Editor of the Journal of Clinical Outcomes Management, and the Associate Editor of the Journal of Patient Safety.

Dr. Bates' special research interests include clinical decision-making and affecting physician-decision-making, particularly using computerized interventions; quality of care and cost-effectiveness and medical practice; and outcome assessment. He has published on medication errors and injuries due to drugs, and the use of information systems to improve medication safety and
the use of ancillary tests, as well as on predictors of bacteremia and evaluation of patients with suspected sepsis. He has published over 400 peer-reviewed papers.