As the amount of medical data and machine learning capabilities grow, the demand for chief research information officers (CRIO) has also increased. That role was pioneered by Regenstrief President and Chief Executive Officer Peter Embí, M.D., M.S. Regenstrief Chief Information Officer Umberto Tachinardi, M.D., MSc, was prominently featured in a Modern Healthcare and a GenomeWeb article discussing the importance of the position.
Dr. Embí was the first person to hold the position of CRIO in the United States, according to a paper he co-authored in Applied Clinical Informatics Journal. He was appointed to the role at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in 2010.
In the decade since then, many CRIO positions have been created, and due to the expanding wealth of biomedical data, CRIO positions have expanded from academic institutions into health systems as well.
Dr. Tachinardi told Modern Healthcare, “[The CRIO role] means someone who is more concerned about innovation, use of data for research or generation of data of research, and implementation or innovation in the use of electronic systems, clinical systems, or innovations in EHR systems. Usually this is what all of us have in common.” Before coming to Regenstrief, he served as the CRIO at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s UW Health.
In the article, Dr. Tachinardi also discussed the variations in CRIO responsibilities in different organizations as well as Regenstrief Institute’s role in providing informatics resources to its partners.
About Umberto Tachinardi, M.D., MSc
In addition to being the chief information officer at Regenstrief Institute, Umberto Tachinardi, M.D., MSc, is the director of clinical research informatics for Regenstrief and the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute and the chief informatics officer for the Indiana University Grand Challenge Precision Health Initiative. He is also the assistant dean for clinical informatics and a professor of biostatistics at Indiana University School of Medicine.
About Peter Embí, M.D., M.S.
In addition to serving as the president and CEO of Regenstrief Institute, Peter Embí, M.D., M.S. is the Leonard Betley Professor of Medicine and associate dean for informatics and health services research at Indiana University School of Medicine, associate director of informatics with Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute and vice president for Learning Health Systems with Indiana University Health.
