Seth Eisen, MD, MS

Seth Eisen, MD, MS

Professor, Division of Rheumatology, School of Medicine

Dr. Seth Eisen is the director of Washington University’s Clinical Rheumatology Research Program. A core principal of the program is cross-division and cross-department investigator collaboration. An internist and epidemiologist, he led the team that created the Vietnam Era Twin (VET) Registry, a national cohort of 7400 male-male Vietnam era veteran twin pairs used to investigate the genetic and environmental influences on a wide variety of physical and psychiatric health issues. He directed or participated in studies that involved collecting interview and standardized physical examination data on a national cohort, and utilized the VA’s vast national electronic medical and administrative records to address a variety of health and policy related issues.

As national director of the VA’s Health Services Research and Development (HSR&D) service (2007-2012), Dr. Eisen developed major initiatives in medical informatics, including the creation of VINCI (VA Informatics & Computing Infrastructure), a powerful, national, virtual computing platform for data analyses and storage using state-of-the-art statistical programs; implemented a national program of natural language processing (NLP) software and tools to facilitate the transformation of the VA’s electronic medical record text data into information useful to investigators and program office leadership; initiated HSR&D’s CREATE (Collaborative Research to Enhance Transformation and Excellence) and COIN (Centers of Innovation) programs that encouraged the development of national, cross-medical center research teams in which program and policy leadership participated; and substantially enhanced HSR&D’s 5-year career development award program.