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SIIM Board Member - Wyatt M. Tellis, PhD

	SIIM Member: 15 years
	SIIM Position: Director At Large
	Professional Position: Research Scientist
	Organization: University of California, San Francisco
	Location: San Francisco, CA

Dr. Wyatt Tellis had always been interested in both computers and medicine. It seemed inevitable, then, that the California native became drawn to the field of imaging informatics. Dr. Tellis is a research scientist in the Informaticist, Radiology, and Biomedical Imaging Department at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Tellis received his undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley in Molecular and Cell Biology. He spent a summer working in the Laboratory for Radiological Informatics at UCSF. There, Dr. Tellis worked with Dr. Katherine Andriole, SIIM Fellow and SIIM 2012 Annual Meeting Program Committee Chair.

“When I was looking for a career path that leveraged these two interests [computers and medicine], she told me about the medical informatics graduate program at UCSF and the rest is history,” Dr. Tellis said. The graduate program was brand new; Dr. Tellis was one of the first graduates.

At the LRI, Dr. Tellis also worked with PACS pioneer Dr. Bernie Huang. “It was wonderful having the opportunity to work with one of the preeminent individuals in the field,” Dr. Tellis said. “He had great vision for where the technology was headed and what problems to tackle next (e.g., web distribution, security, CAD, imaging biomarkers, etc).”

After graduating from UCSF, Dr. Tellis joined the staff as an informaticist.

“One of my first projects was to create a high-interest case file,” Dr. Tellis said. When radiologists were looking at images, they wanted to flag interesting ones that could be used for teaching purposes. His summer project: Create a digital way of storing those images using a PACS. He presented about this work at the 1998 SCAR Annual Meeting.

In 2003, Dr. Tellis was awarded the first SCAR research grant. This grant funded his dissertation project to “explore the use of PDAs (mobile computing devices) to deliver radiology devices at the point of care.” His explanation: When someone is admitted to the ER and the physician needs results right away, the radiologist can enter “wet reads” (preliminary findings) into the PACS and they are delivered to the PDA.

“Receiving the grant was an important moment in my career,” Dr. Tellis said. “It gave me both the resources I needed to pursue my dissertation project and a validation of the work I was doing.”

After the SIIM grant, he applied for an NLM fellowship for additional funding for the project, as there were 2 years of the project left after the 1-year SIIM grant.

Drs. Katherine Andriole, David Avrin, and Ron Arenson, all SIIM Fellows, have served as mentors in his career thus far. “They each provided a great deal of insight into the field. What drew me to them was that they also had a very pragmatic side and were always looking for ways to convert theory into practice,” Dr. Tellis said. “It was very fulfilling to see a project you worked on used by tens or hundreds of users within the institution.”

As a member of the SIIM Board, Dr. Tellis sees assuming this position as both an honor and a way to give back to the society. “I'm honored to have been nominated for a position on the SIIM board and I am very grateful to the society for the opportunities they have provided me,” he said. While these are challenging times, Dr. Tellis said, they also provide opportunities for SIIM to take a leadership role in shaping the future of the field. He said, “Over the years we have amassed a vast array of experts with decades of practical imaging informatics experience. We need to make this expertise available to other imaging domains so they don't make some of the same mistakes.”

Looking to the future, Dr. Tellis said, “I'm hoping that in the coming years, SIIM will continue to expand its educational mission and become a major influence in the lives of the next generation of imaging informaticists.”

Outside of work, Dr. Tellis enjoys spending time with his wife and son. He loves traveling, being a dad, and is a fan of the San Francisco 49ers.