I am Professor and Assistant Dean of Education for Data Science at Emory University SON. With a faculty appointment in the doctoral program, I teach nursing and health informatics. I provide executive leadership to the Center for Data Science, which supports my research on big data focused on quality and safety in the electronic health record along with information technology. I bring forward lifelong experience as an executive nurse in roles of increasing executive responsibilities in industry and practice with a lens of applied informatics. I have more than 45 years’ experience of engagement in the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) and now prestigious fellowship in the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) along with 600 published articles, three books, patents, and numerous chapters and presentations on nursing informatics and professional leadership. My depth and breadth of knowledge of the continuum of informatics derives from a diverse experience in the practice of informatics, with a lens of strategic impact on our patients.

My experience as a lecturer has placed me in a variety of academic nursing settings, including known appointed lectureships at Georgia State University, University of South Carolina, Rutgers University, University of Pennsylvania, and Excelsior College. I received awards from Rutgers University and Michigan Organization of Nursing Executives for excellence in nursing informatics along with the distinguished award from the National Library of Medicine as the 2015 Nurse Informatics award coupled with the Virginia K. Saba award from Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI) in 2014 where in 2007 I was elected to international membership in STTI for contributions to nursing informatics knowledge and international membership into IMIA-Working Group 8- Nursing.

My career has led to being elected and appointed board membership in leading nursing organizations as National League of Nursing (NLN), American Nurses Association (ANA), Georgia Nurses Association (GNA), and American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE). Outside of these professional organizations, my board appointments to First Hand Foundation evolved to create “The Roy L. Simpson Family Foundation”. In addition to venture capital work with company board appointments as MyMedEd, PediaQ and technology industry startups, and the Roy L Simpson scholarship fund at Excelsior college formerly Regent’s College of the State of New York as a trustee of the University. I hold fellowships in the American Academy of Nursing, the American College of Medical Informatics, the New York Academy of Practice and the National Academy of Practice. An active member of ANA, AONE, NLN and AMIA. I served on the board of National Educational Foundation the USA’s oldest philanthropic foundation funding doctoral and masters students in nursing.

My research focus at Emory University is as a lead executive with colleagues in the Center for Data Science housed in the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing chaired by distinguished colleagues Dr. Xiao Hu and Dr. Vicki Herzberg. With my practice in big data analytics, I focus on quality and safety issues with the electronic health record where I am developing surveillance algorithms for quality and safety of patients in acute care expanding across the continuum recognizing NDNQI criteria into a decision support dashboard for bedside caregivers. Recognized with colleagues for an RO1 Grant from NLM. Today I assist and chair post docs in informatics and computer science within the Emory University complex. My entrée into academe is an opportunity to engage with nascent informaticians as they set sails for future leadership in AI and beyond.

• Simpson RL. How nurses can conquer their fear of AI. American Nurse Journal. 2024;19(1):68-68. doi:10.51256/anj012468 https://www.myamericannurse.com/how-nurses-can-conquer-their-fear-of-ai/
• Gu, Siyi BS; Lee, Eric W. MS; Zhang, Wenhui PhD, MS, RN; Simpson, Roy L. DNP, RN; Hertzberg, Vicki Stover PhD; Ho, Joyce C. PhD. Evaluating Natural Language Processing Packages for Predicting Hospital-Acquired Pressure Injuries from Clinical Notes. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing 42(3): p 184-192, March 2024. | DOI: 10.1097/CIN.0000000000001053
• Joyce C. Ho, Mani Sotoodeh, Wenhui Zhang, Roy L. Simpson, Vicki Stover Hertzberg, An AdaBoost-based algorithm to detect hospital-acquired pressure injury in the presence of conflicting annotations, Computers in Biology and Medicine, Volume 168, 2024,107754, ISSN 0010-4825, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compbiomed.2023.107754.
• Roy L Simpson, Joseph A Lee, Yin Li, Yu Jin Kang, Circe Tsui, Jeannie P Cimiotti, Medicare meets the cloud: the development of a secure platform for the storage and analysis of claims data, JAMIA Open, Volume 7, Issue 1, April 2024, ooae007, https://doi.org/10.1093/jamiaopen/ooae007
• Gao G, Vaclavik L, Jeffery AD, Koch EC, Schafer K, Cimiotti JP, Pathak N, Duva I, Martin CL, Simpson RL. Developing a Quality Improvement Implementation Taxonomy for Organizational Employee Wellness Initiatives. Appl Clin Inform. 2024 Jan;15(1):26-33. doi: 10.1055/a-2207-7396. Epub 2024 Nov 9. PMID: 37945000; PMCID: PMC10830245.

• NHWSN: Honorary Alumni Award
• American Academy of Nursing: President’s Award
• Virginia K. Saba: Award for Leadership, Sigma Theta Tau
• Cerner Corporation: DAISY Nurse of the Year
• New York University: Maes MacInnis Award
• Rutgers University: Informatics Award
• Michigan Society of Nursing Service Administrators: Achievement Award