Regenstrief Institute has appointed Vice President for Research Development Eneida Mendonca, M.D., PhD, to also serve as the director of the Clem McDonald Center for Biomedical Informatics at Regenstrief. She will serve in both roles simultaneously.
“I could not be more excited to appoint Dr. Mendonca as our next Director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics at Regenstrief Institute,” said Regenstrief President and Chief Executive Officer Peter Embí, M.D., M.S. “In addition to being an internationally recognized researcher and leader in our field, Dr. Mendonca is highly committed to advancing our mission, and has demonstrated her ability to drive informatics innovations. Under her leadership, CBMI will continue to grow, lead groundbreaking research and deliver the next generation of informatics solutions that will improve health and healthcare.”
Dr. Mendonca is a highly regarded pioneer in employing natural language processing to improve health and healthcare. Her research focuses on developing novel language-driven approaches and automated learning methods to support decision making; exploiting automated semantic and statistical methods to extract biomedical data from patient records while maintaining patient privacy, creating new ways to automatically integrate evidence into clinical practice; and improving infrastructure for healthcare and clinical research.
Dr. Mendonca is a co-author of “Artificial Intelligence in Health Care: The Hope, The Hype, The Promise, and The Peril,” a recent National Academy of Medicine publication that is viewed as a reference for all stakeholders involved in the application of AI for healthcare. She is a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics.
As director, Dr. Mendonca will guide the research priorities and long-term goals of the Center for Biomedical Informatics. She has served as interim director since October of 2019. As director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics, she will hold the Clem McDonald Chair of Biomedical Informatics.
“Regenstrief has a long history of groundbreaking innovations in informatics that have benefited individuals and populations around the world,” said Dr. Mendonca. “Working with our talented cadre of research scientists and the many renowned organizations and leaders with whom they collaborate, we will build on that lauded foundation to advance the science and application of informatics and the equitable delivery of healthcare.”
She joined Regenstrief as VP in March 2019, coming from the University of Wisconsin where she served as an associate professor in the School of Medicine and Public Health’s Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics and in the Department of Pediatrics. She also has held an affiliate appointment in the College of Engineering’s Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and, in 2017, was elected to the UW-Madison faculty senate.
A native of Brazil, Dr. Mendonca holds a medical degree from the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil and also earned a PhD in biomedical informatics from Columbia University in New York.
In addition to her Regenstrief appointments, she holds the IU School of Medicine positions of professor of pediatrics and professor of biostatistics and health data sciences.
About Regenstrief Institute
Founded in 1969 in Indianapolis, the Regenstrief Institute is a local, national and global leader dedicated to a world where better information empowers people to end disease and realize true health. A key research partner to Indiana University, Regenstrief and its research scientists are responsible for a growing number of major healthcare innovations and studies. Examples range from the development of global health information technology standards that enable the use and interoperability of electronic health records to improving patient-physician communications, to creating models of care that inform practice and improve the lives of patients around the globe.
Sam Regenstrief, a nationally successful entrepreneur from Connersville, Indiana, founded the institute with the goal of making healthcare more efficient and accessible for everyone. His vision continues to guide the institute’s research mission.
