Dr. Gardner is one of the principal developers and evaluators of the medical expert system known as HELP (Health Evaluation through Logical Processing). He previously served as a co-director of medical computing at LDS, Cottonwood, and Alta View Hospitals in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Dr. Gardner received a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the University of Utah in 1960. In 1968 he received a PhD in Biophysics and Bioengineering from the University of Utah. Dr. Gardner’s primary academic and research interests were in hospital informatics systems, computerized medical decision-making, computerization of critical care, automation of nursing processes, medical informatics education, and public health informatics.
He is the author or co-author of more than 350 articles in the fields of Medical Informatics and Bioengineering. Dr. Gardner was on the editorial board of Methods of Information in Medicine, and has been a journal editor and on editorial boards of Critical Care Medicine and other critical care journals, as well as the Journal of American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA). He also served as editor-in-chief of the International Journal of clinical Monitoring and Computing.
Dr. Gardner is a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics. He is a past president and served on the board of directors of the American Medical Informatics Association.
As past AMIA President, and Morris F. Collen Award winner, the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) offers a special collection of papers in memory of Dr. Gardner here .
Dr. Gardner passed away after a short illness in 2020.