Charles P Friedman

Charles P. Friedman is a medical health informatician and educator, and an academic. He is a professor in the Department of Learning Health Sciences at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Friedman's research focuses on biomedical and health informatics, as well as the processes of education and learning.

Friedman is a distinguished fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, and a founding fellow of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics.

Education Friedman completed his B.S. in Physics in 1971 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He obtained his M.S. in Physics from MIT in the same year and in 1977, earned his Ph.D. in Education from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In 1992, he undertook advanced studies in Medical Information Science at Stanford University.

From 2007 to 2009, he was deputy national coordinator for Health Information Technology, a division of the US Department of Health and Human Services. In 2009, he was appointed the chief scientific officer of the division and remained at the position until 2011.

Since 2015, he has been editor-in-chief of the journal Learning Health Systems.

Research Friedman's work on learning health systems (LHS) emphasized the potential of a dynamic, data-driven approach to health and health care improvement. He suggested that the effective use of electronic health records (EHRs) could transform raw medical data into structured, computable information and change patient care outcomes. He also highlighted that the achievement of a nation-wide LHS required an IT-enabled socio-technical infrastructure as well as active participation from multiple and diverse stakeholders. To clarify the goal of biomedical informatics, he presented a theorem which stated that biomedical informatics resources should strive to make people better than they would be without assistance from these resources.

Awards and honors 1992 – Elected Fellow, American College of Medical Informatics 2010 – Secretarial Achievement Award, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2017 – Inaugural Fellow, International Academy for Health Science Informatics 2021 – Honorary Doctorate in Health Sciences and Medicine, University of Lucerne, Switzerland 2022 – Distinguished Fellow, American College of Medical Informatics