It is with great sorrow that we are sharing the news about the death of former National Library of Medicine Director Donald A.B. Lindberg, MD with the IMIA community.  Dr. Lindberg was the Director of the United States National Library of Medicine from 1984 until his retirement in 2015 making him the library’s longest serving director. He was the winner of the 1997 Morris F. Collen Award.

Dr. Lindberg came to the NLM from the University of Missouri. A pathologist, he became a pioneer in the use of computers and medicine and the founding president of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA).  He was an instrumental figure during IMIA’s transition from IFIP – TC – 4 as the representative for the United States and served as MedInfo’s Editorial Co-Chair in 1980 and as Chair of the Scientific Program Committee in 1986.

Under his leadership at the NLM, PubMed and PubMed Central,  ClinicalTrials.gov,  and MedlinePlus provided improved access to the medical literature, clinical trials and consumer health information.  He established the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) for access to biomedical and genomic information. Of note is that these tools were made available to the whole world and not just the US. NIH Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD said about Dr. Lindberg  “Don created programs that transformed our approach to information.”

Don will be deeply missed by his family, his friends, his mentees, and the biomedical informatics community.

Christoph U. Lehmann, MD, FAAP, FACMI, FIAHSI
Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Pediatrics
Vanderbilt University