Donald A. B. Lindberg (1933–2019)

Donald A. B. Lindberg (1933–2019)

We are enormously saddened by the death of our friend and colleague, Donald A.B. Lindberg, MD, on August 17, 2019. Throughout his long career, Don was a visionary leader who, earlier than most, saw the potential of technology to improve health care. He was a founder of our field, and he was a steadfast supporter of Methods. Beginning in 1970, when the journal was still a relatively new journal edited by Gustav Wagner, Don served in various capacities for the journal, including as a member of the editorial board, as associate editor, and finally as senior editor. He was among the distinguished colleagues who came together at the University of Heidelberg in June 2011 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Methods.

Donald Lindberg was born on September 21, 1933 at Brooklyn in New York. He graduated Magna cum Laude from Amherst College in Massachusetts in 1954 and went on to medical school at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, graduating in 1958. He trained in anatomy and clinical pathology at Columbia–Presbyterian Medical Center, and he subsequently spent more than 20 years at the University of Missouri, where he was a professor of pathology and information science. He joined the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) as its director in 1984 and retired in 2015 after leading the library for more than 30 years. He was appointed the founding director of the coordinating center for the White House initiative known as the High Performance Computing and Communications program in the early 1990's, a position he held for several years concurrently with the directorship of NLM. In 1996, he was named by the Secretary of the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary to be the U.S. Coordinator for the G-7 Global Healthcare Applications Project.

Don oversaw the NLM during a period of enormous technological and scientific advances, and his great skill at harnessing those advances for scientific discovery and social good is well-known. The Human Genome Project of National Institute of Health (NIH) led to the establishment of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at NLM during Don's tenure. The many NCBI contributions since its establishment in the late 1980's have revolutionized the way biomedical research is conducted. Extraordinary access to the internet was ushered in by the web browser technology that became available in the mid 1990's. Don immediately saw this as an opportunity to open NLM's vast resources to the world, and within short order, anyone, anywhere could find and make use of NLM's treasure trove of biomedical information. The PubMed interface to MEDLINE, the database of citations to the world's biomedical literature, PubMed Central, the database of publicly accessible full text articles, and ClinicalTrials.gov, the database of privately and publicly funded clinical studies from around the world, along with a host of chemical, drug, environmental health, and toxicology resources continue to be used every day by millions of people around the globe.

Don had a deep commitment to improving the lives of patients and their families. MedlinePlus, an NLM resource designed specifically for patients and families to find high-quality health information was of great importance to him. He was also a devoted member of the board of Health on the Net, an organization founded in the mid 1990's to identify and promote reliable health information online. He established partnerships with underserved communities throughout the United States and expanded the reach of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, a nation-wide network of libraries and other organizations that provide health information wherever it is needed.

Don's importance to the field of biomedical informatics cannot be overemphasized. Shortly after arriving at NLM in the early 1980's, he brought together all the leaders (and their best students) of the major academic medical informatics centers around the country with the ambitious goal to provide better access to distributed health information. This effort resulted in what came to be known as the Unified Medical Language System, a widely-used set of tools for interlinking the data found in health information systems, such as electronic health record systems, scientific literature databases, and public health resources. NLM's informatics training programs have supported multiple generations of trainees who have gone on to become leaders in the field. NLM's grants program, though relatively small in comparison with other NIH institutes, has funded some of the most important research in our field. Don helped to establish the American Medical Informatics Association and served as its first President. He has been a key force in the enormous growth of our field since its inception, and he has contributed to its recognition as a scientific discipline at the national and international levels.

Don's many accomplishments have been amply recognized with numerous awards, honorary doctorates, and other honors. We mourn the loss of a superb leader, a dedicated public servant, and a staunch supporter of our field. We will miss our good friend Don Lindberg, and we will remember him with great fondness.