Words from the Wise
An Interview with Donald Lindberg, MD
Donald Lindberg, MD has served as the Director of the National Library of Medicine since 1984. His pioneering efforts to apply technology to healthcare stretch back to his efforts in 1960 at the University of Missouri; as such, he is one of the few people who can truly be said to have a hand in the evolution of biomedical informatics from the field’s creation to the present day. Read Dr. Lindberg’s complete biographical sketch at the NLM’s website.
Dr. Lindberg was interviewed by DBMI’s Nancy Whelan in August 2007.
1. How did you get started in Informatics?
Experimental embryology at Amherst College. NIH supported studies of bacterial sensitivity to antibiotics. Mathematical modeling of the bacterial growth. Simultaneous use of computers and telecom for hospital clinical lab quality control and results reporting. Later, other models of intermediate metabolism and later additional hospital information systems.
2. Who were your mentors?
Oscar Schotte at Amherst, Robert Loeb and Harry Smith at P&S, Vernon Wilson at the University of Missouri.
3. What other paths would you have liked to explore?
As a med student, I fell in love sequentially with every medical specialty they let us study – with the exception of treating cancer in kids. I picked Anatomic and Clinical Pathology because it seemed to offer at least the possibility of more answers than purely clinical medicine.
4. Do you set goals? One year? Five Years?
When I started the residency in path in a University (i.e. Columbia), I set the goal to discover a new and important thing within the first year. Else, I would send myself to a more work-a-day path residency elsewhere.
5. What Books influenced you most?
I recall reading in the library of the Department of Pathology at P&S (Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons) when the brand new Surgical Path book by Lauren Ackerman arrived. I found he had dedicated it to “Arthur Purdy Stout, the greatest surgical pathologist in the world”. Wondering what one had to do or be to rank so, I walked down Fort Washington Avenue and signed on with Dr. Stout to find out.
Another really mind expanding read was for me Sir Howard Florey’s collected lectures on General Pathology. I spent so much time with this, my wife called it The Florey Story.
6. What is currently on your reading list?
This summer I finished Skunkworks, Fumbling the Future, Freeman Dyson’s Disturbing the Universe, Freud’s Wizard, The Dark Lady of DNA, Indian Givers, Crazy Horse and Custer, Open Sources, Wikinomics, The Wisdom of Crowds, and too many software manuals.
Current reading list: Perfectly Reasonable Deviations, and Lombardo’s new translation of Homer’s Odyssey.
7. Who do you think is doing the most important work in the bioinformatics field today?
I think we are still waiting for another basic thinker like Scott Blois to emerge.
8. What is the most important work in the field today?
Many attempts to discover genome/phenome relationships. We won’t know who is “best” 'til one wins.
9. Is the concept of sharing beyond the reach of some? Why? What is the catalyst for change?
Sharing of grant supported research results and results of volunteers in human clinical trials WILL be shared, because the public and their Congressional reps simply demand it. More and more scientific data (e.g. the small molecule data, SNP consortium data) are voluntarily being made public simply because it so clearly speeds up scientific progress for everyone.
10. Where can additional funding be obtained?
File lots of grant applications! BUT also consider working cheap. Don’t let an agency own you.
11. Is the scope of informatics international? To what extent?
Yes, definitely. Lots of smart colleagues overseas. Lots of ideas to pay attention to. But the US is still in the lead.
12. Who can best advance the field? What credentials? What personality characteristics? What background? Degree(s)?
Hard to tell. By paying attention to my past mistakes, I’ve learned not to judge someone’s ability too quickly, and definitely not according to superficial appearance.
A lot of the rest is personal preference. I do not like TV blabberers. So I tend to side with Will Shakespeare that “Quiet men are the best men”.
We are doing something wrong in not recruiting women to this field too (quiet or otherwise!).
13. How do you answer the skeptics?
The papers about “evaluating” computers in medicine are largely make-work. Is there some other way to deal with millions of scientific reports and billions of genetic elements?