G. Octo Barnett

In 1964, Dr. Barnett was recruited by Mass General to head the Hospital Computer Project, an ambitious plan to implement a large hospital information system. From this project, the Laboratory of Computer Science was born. He remained the director of the lab until his retirement in 2012.

Dr. Barnett was co-developer of COSTAR, one of the nation’s first computerized electronic health records, and of DXplain, one of the best known, widely used diagnostic decision support systems. The programming language known as M, Caché, or MUMPS, which remains in widespread use today as the foundation of numerous clinical systems, was invented in LCS under his leadership. He has authored numerous publications in medical informatics with subjects as diverse as electronic health records, medical education, knowledge access, and decision support.

Dr. Barnett is a founding fellow and former president of the American College of Medical Informatics and received the ACMI Morris Collen Award of Excellence. He is also a founder and original member of the American Medical Informatics Association. He was an editor of Methods of Information in Medicine and Computers in Biomedical Research. He has served on the National Institutes of Health Computer Research Study Section and the Study Section on Health Care Systems.