David W. Bates, MD, MSc
Dr. Bates is Chief, Division of General Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and is a practicing general internist. He also serves as Medical Director of Clinical and Quality Analysis for Partner's Healthcare Systems. He is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is also the former Medical Director of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Physician Hospital Organization. He has been elected to the Institute of Medicine, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the American College of Medical Informatics. Trained as a clinical epidemiologist, his primary interest has been the use of computer systems to improve patient care. The overall focus of that work has been on improving the systems by which drugs are given.
Dr. Bates’ special research interests include clinical decision-making and affecting physician-decision-making, particularly using computerized interventions; quality of care and cost-effectiveness in medical practice; and outcomes assessment. In addition to the above work, he has published on improving efficiency and quality using information systems by giving physicians information about clinical laboratory and radiology tests. Taken together, the results of these studies have demonstrated that providing computerized decision support can substantially reduce the costs of care, while at the same time improving safety.
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 a Master of Science in health policy and management from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1990.
