About Bill Hersh

William Hersh, MD is a Professor in the Division of Informatics, Clinical Epidemiology, and Translational Data Science (DICE) in the Department of Medicine of the School of Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland, Oregon, USA. Dr. Hersh served as the Inaugural Chair of OHSU's Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology (DMICE) from 2003 to 2022. He is a leader and innovator in biomedical informatics, both in education and research, and continues his work as a professor in the department.

In education, Dr. Hersh served as Director of OHSU’s Biomedical Informatics Graduate Program from its inception in 1996 through 2023 and remains an active faculty member. The program has awarded over 1000 degrees and certificates. Dr. Hersh also served as PI and Director of OHSU’s NLM T15 Biomedical Informatics and Data Science Research Training Program from 2002-2025. Dr. Hersh spearheaded OHSU’s efforts in online learning in biomedical informatics and has taught in person and online widely around the world.

Dr. Hersh has led a number of innovations in biomedical informatics education. He conceptualized and implemented the first offering of the American Medical Informatics Association 10x10 (“ten by ten”) program, which provides the equivalent of an introductory graduate-level course and has been completed by over 3400 people. He is Editor of the textbook, Health Informatics: Practical Guide, 8th Edition (2022).

In research, Dr. Hersh's main efforts have been in the area of information retrieval (also known as search) applied to biomedicine. He has authored over 200 scientific papers and abstracts as well as the book, Information Retrieval: A Biomedical and Health Perspective, 4th Edition (Springer, 2020). His current work focuses on the application of search techniques to electronic health record data, aiming to improve patient cohort discovery and amplification of signals of rare diseases. He has also led a number of information retrieval challenge evaluations in the biomedical domain under the guise of the Text Retrieval Conference (TREC).

Dr. Hersh is a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics (FACMI), the American Medical Informatics Association (FAMIA), the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (FIAHSI), and the American College of Physicians (FACP). He is an elected member of the SIGIR Academy. He has also won numerous awards over the years.