Don Lindberg, Director of the National Library of Medicine for 30+ Years, Plans to Retire at the End of March 2015

From an Announcement by Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health:

Don Lindberg, M.D., who has been the director of the National Library of Medicine for more than 30 years, has informed me that he plans to retire at the end of March 2015. I want to thank Don for his outstanding service to NIH, to the global biomedical research community, and to health professionals, patients, and the public. Trained as a pathologist, Don re-invented himself as an expert and groundbreaking innovator in the world of information technology, artificial intelligence, computer-aided medical diagnosis, and electronic health records.
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Don has created programs that changed fundamentally the way biomedical information is collected, shared, and analyzed. Think about it—when Don began, NLM had no electronic journals in its collection, few people owned personal computers, and even fewer had access to the Internet. He introduced numerous landmark projects such as free Internet access to MEDLINE via PubMed, MedlinePlus for the general public, the Visible Human Project, ClinicalTrials.gov, the Unified Medical Language System, and more. Don also created the National Center for Biomedical Information (NCBI). NCBI has been a focal point for “Big Data” in biomedicine for decades, providing rapid access to the data generated by the Human Genome Project and now to massive amounts of genetic sequence data generated from evolving high-throughput sequencing technologies. GenBank, PubMed Central, and dbGaP are just some of the many NCBI databases that support and enable access to the results of research funded by NIH and many other organizations.

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See Also: Dr. Lindberg Was the Recipient of the 2014 Paul Evan Peters Award From CNI, ARL, and EDUCAUSE
See Also: Biographical Sketch, Donald A.B. Lindberg, M.D.(via NLM)
UPDATE See Also: Medical Informatics Trailblazer Lindberg Retiring In March (Via Modern Healthcare)

Filed under: Associations and Organizations, Awards, Data Files, Libraries, National Libraries, News