Renato Marcos Endrizzi Sabbatini, Brazilian biomedical and computer scientist, educator, science writer, entrepreneur and administrator, born in Campinas, State of São Paulo, Brazil, on 20 February 1947. Holds a doctoral degree in Physiology by the University of São Paulo.

A pioneer and main contributor to research, development, publishing and social organization in the following areas:

• Neuroethology
• Medical informatics (computer applications in the Health Sciences, Biology and Medicine)
• Internet and Web applications in medicine, biology and health
• Electronic publishing in medicine, biology and health
• Artificial Intelligence applications in biomedicine
• Artificial Neural Networks applications in biomedicine
• Computer Based Education
• Distance education and E-learning
• Telemedicine
• History of Neuroscience

Contents

1 Research & education 2 Organizational work 3 Popularizing science 4 External links

Research & education

Dr. Sabbatini began his scientific career in physiology under the supervision of Dr. Miguel Rolando Covian, who encouraged him to found the first research laboratory of neuroethology in Latin America, in 1974, in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of São Paulo at Ribeirão Preto, Brazil, where he also started one of the first Brazilian and Latin American groups of research, development and education on the computer applications to biomedicine, in 1970. After moving to the State University of Campinas in 1983, Dr. Sabbatini founded the Center for Biomedical Informatics, the first interdisciplinary group of its kind in Brazil and was appointed chairman of the newly created area of medical informatics in the Medical School and a collaborating professor with the Department of Biomedical Engineering of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering. In these capacities, Until his retirement from active duty with the University, 20 years later, Dr. Sabbatini supervised dozens of research projects, masters and doctoral dissertations, wrote hundreds of papers and books in many fields, and created a series of new graduate courses and disciplines in biomedical computing, artificial intelligence, distance education, electronic publishing, Internet applications and telemedicine. He was also one of the first to establish medical informatics in the undergraduate curricula in medicine and nursing.

Starting in 1993, with the advent of the WWW in Brazil, Dr. Sabbatini became a leader in the research of new technologies and in the development of a large number of on-line courses in health, using videoconferencing, satellite-based teleconferencing and the Internet. He has worked intensively in building teaching capacity in this field in Brazil. He also founded the Edumed Institute for Education in Medicine and Health, acting until this day as his CEO and Chairman of the Board, and director of its International Center for Information Technologies in Health. The Edumed Institute has organized a national consortium comprising dozens of universities and medical associations with the aim of developing a national network of distance education.

Organizational work

Dr. Sabbatini was one of the foremost specialists in the country to promote the birth of medical informatics as a new science, being involved in the creation of the Brazilian Society for Health Informatics, the Brazilian Journal of Health Informatics, and the First Brazilian Congress on Health Informatics and the series of International Conferences on Telemedicine and Distance Education TELMED. Among other things, he created and edited three other pioneering periodicals in medical informatics, Informedica, Intermedic and Informatica Médica magazines, served as Medical Informatics Director to the Brazilian Medical Association and as an national and international consultant to the World Health Organization, Pan-American Health Organization, Inter-American Development Bank and others.

Popularizing science

Dr. Sabbatini has a long history of writing about science to laypersons, having started with articles and columns in major Brazilian magazines and newspapers, such as Folha de São Paulo and O Estado de São Paulo. From 1991 to 2001, he wrote a series of weekly science and informatics columns in the main newspaper of Campinas. For this effort, he won the prestigious 1992 award of the Brazilian National Research Council, as the best science writer. He has taught and lectured extensively on science journalism and is active in the professional field. Starting 1996, Dr. Sabbatini created with his colleagues in the State University of Campinas a number of websites devoted to promote the awareness of general public to health-related information, such as, among others: the Brazilian Virtual Hospital (the third of its kind in the world), the Virtual Sports Center, the Brazilian Virtual Veterinary Hospital, the Virtual Odontology Center, the Visible Human Image Database, the Health & Life On-line Magazine, the Brain & Mind On-Line Magazine (http://www.cerebromente.org.br), the NutriWeb On-Line Magazine (http://www.nutriweb.org.br), several bulletins and newsletter distributed by email lists. He created and acted as technical director to the first Brazilian project of scientific electronic publishing, the e*pub Group, where several pioneering, exclusively on-line publications were created under his technical direction, such as the On-Line Journal of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and the On-Line Journal of Dentistry and Oral Medicine.

External links

• Official website (http://www.sabbatini.com/renato)