FARMINGTON HILLS — Botsford Hospital has named Wiley C. Fan, D.O., as its medical director of informatics and patient safety. At Botsford, Fan seems to lives a double professional life. Not only does he practice infectious disease medicine by treating patients at the hospital, Fan also helps the health care facility develop its electronic medical records and other data systems. 
 

As a physician who earned a minor in computer science during his undergraduate education, Fan has a foot in both worlds — medicine and technology — and can bridge the gap between them. He is the glue between the hospital’s corporate information technology department and its medical staff. Since Fan has the vocabulary of both sides, he is able to serve as translator between them. He has expertise in clinical care, knowledge of how patients flow through the hospital, familiarity with the medical specialties gained through his 28 years as an infectious disease specialist, and understanding of computer systems. 
 

The next EMR project the hospital is tackling is computerized physician order entry. This will be a transition to a fully operational EMR, considering that physician orders are central to patient care and treatment. For most Botsford physicians, it will be a completely new way of working. Fan’s tasks are certainly cut out for him. 
 

He promises never to give up caring for patients, though. While most of them are hospitalized, Fan also has a thriving outpatient practice where he sees patients who need either general infectious disease care or HIV treatment. This multitalented doctor also leads Botsford Hospital’s Infectious Disease Fellowship Program — one of only three such osteopathic physician-training programs in the country — as its director. Though Fan has been a physician for many years, he embraces new ideas and is excited by what technology can bring to medicine and how it can help optimize patient care.
