Medical Alumni Resident Citation Award

The University of Wisconsin Medical Alumni Association Medical Alumni Resident Citation Award honors an individual who has completed a residency or fellowship at University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics and has achieved distinction in medicine. Achievement is recognized through excellence in the practice of medicine, in academic activities and in research accomplishment.

2012 Medical Alumni Resident Citation Award Recipient

Warner V. Slack, MD

Patients owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Slack for the work he has done over the past 45 years. He focused his research on the use of computers to improve communication in medicine and to empower both doctors and patients for better health care.

His early work on computer-based medical interviewing, when he was a resident at UW-Madison, led to the first studies of patientcomputer dialogue and formed the basis of a new field in the use of the computer as an assistant to the patient.

Over the years, Dr. Slack established new computer-based approaches to the medical interview, and developed and studied programs that provide direct assistance to the patient in the management of medical and psychological problems. He was an early advocate of "patient power," arguing for a shared medical record and the patient's right to participate as a peer with the doctor in decisions about diagnosis and treatment.

With colleagues at the Center for Clinical Computing at Harvard, he developed and implemented an integrated, hospital-wide clinical computing system for use at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital and Brigham and Women's hospitals.

On the faculty in Harvard Medical School's Department of Medicine for more than four decades, he earned his MD at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.