Peter Bensch, PhD, MBA

Chief Information Officer

Dr. Bensch has over 30 years of computing experience. Now on the fourth generation of computerized patient records, he has optimized the data base design for the Internet with the right mix of convenience and performance. Since 1990, he has been working with Dr. Weston on a concept we called the Open Computer-Based Patient Record (OCPR).

This concept involves establishing links between patient data in heterogeneous database systems (including links between relational and legacy databases). This concept was first implemented at the UCSD Student Health Services in a proprietary relational medical database system (ACUCARE) developed under an educational grant. It has since proven itself in the SDSU iCHART and SDCS SHINE Internet Patient Record projects.

Peter's earlier research was in the area of Natural Language Processing, examining large selections of raw text. In that environment, he studied the classification of relatively infrequently occurring words by examining a new kind of co-occurrence statistic that ignored frequency. In 1998, he began applying the underlying research concepts to"mine" strategic information from publicly available HTML pages for the Online Travel Care product for International SOS. Future applications will include parsing key concepts from free text medical documents to facilitate accurate medical coding and documentation.

Peter has a PhD in Cognitive Science and Computer Science from UCSD and an MBA in management from Golden Gate University.