Prof. Dr. Elske Ammenwerth studied health informatics at the university of Heidelberg/university of applied sciences Heilbronn and obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg in 2001. In 2002, she joined UMIT - University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology as assistant professor and head of the Research Group on Assessment of Health Information Systems. In 2005, she was appointed Professor for Health Informatics at UMIT where she now heads the Institute for Health Information Systems..
Her research comprises tactical and strategic management of health information systems including process management and optimization, electronic health record and patient portals, strategic IT planning, methodology and practice of evaluation of IT in health care, and IT benchmarking. She is head of the IT strategy board of the Tyrolean state hospitals (TILAK). She has been managing editor of the IMIA Yearbook of Medical Informatics until 2008 and is recently member of the editorial board of Int J Med Inform and Method Inf Med. In 2003, she initiated the Working Group on Assessment of Health Information Systems of EFMI (European Federation for Health Informatics) that she is leading since then. She is also co-charing the Austrian health informatics working group (AK-MI). She is IMIA and EFMI representative of Austria.
Elske Ammenwerth published around 50 papers in international peer-reviewed papers in the last years and published or edited 7 books on health informatics. Since 2005, she was member of the programm commitees of around 40 scientific workshops and conferences. Since 2001 she supervised aroudd 60 bachelor- and master thesis as well as five PhD students. For her contribution to evidence-based health informatics, she received the German David-Sackett-Price in 2008.