Photo of me and Joan Blessington Snyder, a Parkinson's Disease patient, activist, and author!	John Lester Information Systems Director, Neurology Service at Massachusetts General Hospital Research Associate, Harvard Medical School Member of the World Wide Web Consortium, representing Partners HealthCare	Contact Information: John Lester Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Neurology 55 Fruit Street, Room VBK-915 Boston, MA 02114 fax: 617-726-2353 phone/page/message: www.pagejohn.com
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Hello! I'm the Information Systems Director for the Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, and I'm also a Research Associate in Neurology at Harvard Medical School. I'm responsible for helping people use computers in creative ways to solve healthcare problems. I have a degree in Biology and worked in medical research for 4 years at MGH and in Boston University's teaching labs for 2 years before that. My experience is in computer-supported cooperative work, Web-development, Internet/Intranet technology, image analysis, digital photography, networking, electronic publishing, data acquisition systems, systems security, and systems integration. My time is spent in both Boston (MGH main hospital) and the Center for Aging, Genetics, and Neurodegeneration in Charlestown Navy Yard for research, and I coordinate cross-departmental projects with MGH's Information Resources and Partners HealthCare System. I frequently give presentations at Healthcare and Technology conferences on topics involving enterprise-wide Internet strategies in a healthcare environment, and I'm particularly interested in computer-supported methods of helping patients and caregivers worldwide. Handheld computers in medicine are a serious interest of mine, and you can read this article in the New York Times about a project I'm working on with residents and PalmPilots. As the Chairman of the MGH WWW Committee I help direct the use of web-based technology across the institution, and I am on the Advisory Committee of the World Wide Web Consortium, representing Partners HealthCare System. Finally, I spend some time consulting for the Mind Brain Behavior Initiative at Harvard University on collaborative technology projects, and at Massachusetts General Hospital I work directly for Dr. Anne B. Young, the Chief of Neurology at MGH.

Here's my official Harvard CV.

Check out Dr. Leigh Hochberg's website. He's one of our Chief Residents, and he just came back from an amazing vacation in Borneo. Lots of great pictures!

The Medical Records Institute held their TEPR 2001 Conference in Boston from May 8-31, 2001. I spoke on May 12th in the HealthChoice Forum (IT Innovators) on "Building Online Patient Communities: How Providers can Interface with Patients." Here are all my slides.

The Healthcare Marketing & Communications Council held a full-day "ROiHealth Seminar" on March 20, 2001 in the Crowne Plaza Manhattan in New York City. I was invited to speak at the opening panel, along with Robert Rouse (VP at Lehman Brothers) and Jordan Rosner (Director of eCommerce at Pfizer). It was a great meeting, and one of the highlights was a lively lunch presentation by Dr. George Lundberg (Editor in Chief of Medscape, former Editor in Chief of JAMA). Here are all the slides from my presentation. I spoke about Online Patient Communities; how important they are to patients and caregivers, and their importance from the perspective of pharmaceutical companies and businesses involved with healthcare.

I recently helped organize the Harvard Medical School CME (Continuing Medical Education) course at eHealthcareWorld, December 2000, NYC. Here's a page with one of my presentations...slides and full audio. I had the chance to present with Brenda and Nan from PLWP (People Living with Parkinson's)...be sure to listen to their talk too!

Pharmaceutical Executive Magazine interviewed me about my work with online communities, and here's the article: "Power to the People!"

I gave a presentation at a local Parkinson's Disease Support Group in Tennessee, and the local newspaper and television station covered the event. Read all about it here.

I have been doing some research on computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) and web-based patient support systems. You can view our current papers and posters if you're interested. Also...take a look at this chapter I wrote for a book on Patient Resources on the Internet...it's called "Websites by Providers, Patients, and Caregivers - A Review"

I'm very interested in Artificial Intelligence, Cybernetics, and Robotics. Designing and building robots is fascinating. I manage the Sony AIBO Webring, in case you'd like to learn more about the AIBO and robotics/cybernetics in general.

Videoconferencing and telecommunications are very interesting to me, and I maintain a web-based teleconferencing camera at www.pagejohn.com. Most of the time you can use it to see if I'm physically at my MGH office. I plan to add some bidirectional functionality in the near future.

Miscellaneous Information

This is a place for miscellaneous information about myself and my non-professional interests. I have a background in biology, and unique animals are of special interest to me. I used to own hedgehogs, and please explore this site to learn about these gentle creatures of the night.

I travel fairly frequently, and I'm invited to give many talks and presentations at different places around the world. I also travel to learn about new cultures, and many of my current research interests lie in the areas of cultural anthropology and sociology involving online communities. Here are some images from a recent trip I took to Japan.

Before I started shaving my head, I used to have a lot of hair. And here is a site I mess around with on my own time outside of MGH.

Finally, here are some images that simply are important to me for one reason or another.