Washington State Department of Health
Informatics Office
P.O. Box 47811
Olympia,
WA
98504
Email:
rita.altamore@doh.wa.gov
Biographical Sketch:
Dr. Altamore has been a member of the Washington State’s public health informatics team since July 2000. She has worked on several PHIN components, including web-based reporting and integrated data repository design, but has been primarily involved in building electronic interfaces from laboratories and hospitals for notifiable condition reporting. Prior to her time at DOH, she worked for more than a decade as a member of the team helping to build a clinical repository at the University of Washington Academic Medical Centers. As part of those activities she helped design real-time HL7 interfaces from a wide variety of systems, including appointments, transcribed documents, laboratory, radiology, and pathology. She obtained HL7 certification in January 2003 and is a founder and one of the co-chairs of the public health work group within HL7.
Dr. Altamore holds an MD from Boston University and an MPH from the University of Washington (UW), and completed a RWJ Faculty Development Fellowship in Family Medicine. She is board certified in Preventive Medicine and board-eligible in Family Medicine. She is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Health Services at the UW and a member of the graduate faculty. At the UW, she was formerly the Director of the Extended Master of Public Health Degree Program and Medical Director of the MEDEX Physician Assistant training program, and taught courses in information systems, quality of health care, research methods and program evaluation. She serves on numerous national committees and work groups, and has published journal articles and presented at national meetings.