Workshop Faculty
Connie White Delaney, PhD, RN, FAAN, FACMI, FNAP
Professor & Dean, University of Minnesota School of Nursing & Institute for Health Informatics.
Knowledge Generation/Reserach Lead - National Center for Interprofessional Practice & Education
Connie White Delaney is Professor & Dean, School of Nursing, University of Minnesota. She also served as Associate Director of the Clinical Translational Science Institute –Biomedical Informatics, and Acting Director of the Institute for Health Informatics (IHI) in the Academic Health Center from 2010-2015. Delaney is the first Fellow in the College of Medical Informatics to serve as a Dean of Nursing. Delaney was an inaugural appointee to the USA Health Information Technology Policy Committee, Office of the National Coordinator, Office of the Secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). She is an active researcher and writer in the areas of national data and information technology standards development for essential nursing and health care, outcomes/safety, data science, and translational science. She serves on numerous health, business/industry and policy boards/advisory committees. She holds a BSN with majors in nursing and mathematics, MA in Nursing, Ph.D. Educational Administration and Computer Applications, and completed postdoctoral study in nursing & medical informatics.
Thomas R. Clancy, PhD, MBA, RN, FAAN
Clinical Professor and Associate Dean, University of Minnesota School of Nursing & Institute for Health Informatics
Thomas R. Clancy is a clinical professor at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing where he teaches, conducts research and consults on the integration of technology into the workflow of complex healthcare systems. Dr. Clancy also serves as the Cochair of the Informatics and Technology Expert Panel for the American Academy of Nursing. Prior to becoming a full time faculty member, Dr. Clancy spent 30 years working in health systems as a nurse, chief nursing officer, as well as a principle consultant in the healthcare information technology industry. Dr. Clancy specializes on the use of analytical and simulation models as tools to predict return on investment measures for new medical devices and information technology prior to their use in a healthcare setting. As the Assistant Dean for Practice, Partnerships and Professional Development, Dr. Clancy has developed a number of partnerships and collaborations between emerging medical device companies, health systems and the University Of Minnesota School Of Nursing to investigate the use of simulation as a means to accelerate the adoption of new technology.
Ahmad AbuSalah, PhD, MSc
Research Assistant Professor, Institute for Health Informatics
Lead Informaticist, National Center for Interprofessional Practice & Education
Dr. AbuSalah is a Research Assistant Professor and Core Faculty at the Institute for Health Informatics at the University of Minnesota (UMN). He serves as the Director of Clinical Informatics at the Best Practices Integrative Informatics Consulting and Collaborative Science Core (BPIC) of CTSI’s Biomedical Informatics Program. At his role, Dr. AbuSalah leads the informatics consultation services which provide a full suite of informatics consultations to researchers and PIs. Dr. AbuSalah is also the lead informaticist at the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education. Dr. AbuSalah has a rich industry and research background in healthcare data management and analytics with focus on large scale healthcare data integration, Informatics Infrastructure Models, Business Intelligence (BI) and value-based models for the support of patient safety, quality of care and cost reduction.
Lisiane Pruinelli, PhD, RN
Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota School of Nursing & Institute for Health Informatics
Dr. Pruinelli is an Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing. She earned a PhD degree from the University of Minnesota School of Nursing and Master’s of Sciences and Bachelor’s of Sciences degrees from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Dr. Pruinelli teaches statistics and health informatics for undergraduate students. Her research leverages nursing informatics and data science methods to investigate acute disease conditions such as sepsis and liver transplantation, to increase the quality of health care delivery and improve the patient care experience.
James Pacala, MD, MS
Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota School of Nursing & Institute for Health Informatics
James Pacala, MD, MS, has performed research and published extensively on models of care delivery to geriatric populations and innovative teaching methods. He is a past president of the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) and is co-author of the AGS practice handbook, Geriatrics At Your Fingertips. Pacala is involved in medical student education and serves as associate head of the U of M Family Medicine and Community Health. In 2013, he was appointed to the 2013-14 Health and Aging Policy Fellowship.
Amy Pittenger, Pharm.D., Ph.D.
Professor and Associate Head, Department of Family Medicine and Community Health
Amy Pittenger, Pharm.D., Ph.D. received her BS Pharmacy and Pharm.D. at University of Minnesota. She completed a M.S. in Clinical Science at the University of Pittsburgh, after which she was a faculty member in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Dr. Pittenger returned to Minnesota and spent the next several years in pharmaceutical industry in a variety of research related positions. Dr. Pittenger joined the University of Minnesota, College of Pharmacy in April 2005. She was responsible for developing, implementing, and evaluating online courses for undergraduate, graduate, and health professional students. Dr. Pittenger also is a PhD graduate from the College of Education and Human Development, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Learning Technologies Program. Her dissertation title was “Exploring the use of a Social Network to Facilitate and Integrate Long-Term Interprofessional Educational Experiences”. Dr. Pittenger is currently the Director of Interprofessional Education.