Vitaly Herasevich, MD, PhD, MSc is an internationally recognized expert in applied clinical informatics and critical care medicine. He is Professor of Anesthesiology and Professor of Medicine in the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, Division of Critical Care, at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. Over the past 25+ years, Dr. Herasevich has been at the forefront of transforming how information technology is integrated into clinical practice, with particular focus on the intensive care environment.
Dr. Herasevich began his medical training in Belarus, where he earned his MD and PhD degrees, and subsequently pursued specialized training in medical informatics and clinical research. He joined Mayo Clinic in 2006, where he earned an MSc in Clinical Research and Informatics and became co-director of the Clinical Informatics in Intensive Care Laboratory. The laboratory’s mission is to improve outcomes in critical care through the development and evaluation of health IT tools that enhance decision-making, safety, and quality of care.
Among his most impactful innovations are clinical decision support systems (CDSS) tailored to critical care. He is one of the key developers of syndromic surveillance tools, commonly referred to as “sniffers,” which provide early electronic alerts for life-threatening conditions like sepsis, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and shock. These tools are designed to promote earlier recognition and intervention, ultimately saving lives. He also co-developed the Ambient Warning and Response Evaluation (AWARE) system—a novel, context-aware, informatics-driven visualization and alerting platform aimed at reducing information overload and improving care coordination in the intensive care unit (ICU). This work has been widely recognized for its real-world impact on patient safety and workflow efficiency.
Dr. Herasevich has also played a leading role in designing and implementing clinical data warehouses that support quality improvement, population health analytics, and outcomes-based research. He has served as principal investigator (PI), co-investigator, or informatics lead on numerous federal (NIH, AHRQ, DoD) and industry-funded grants, cumulatively exceeding $115 million in research support. His scholarship includes over 150 peer-reviewed publications, and he is the lead author of the widely used reference textbook, “Health Information Technology Evaluation Handbook,” now in its second edition.
A passionate advocate for interdisciplinary collaboration, Dr. Herasevich is active in numerous professional and scientific societies. He is a Fellow of the American College of Critical Care Medicine (FCCM), a Fellow of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (FHIMSS), and a Fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association (FAMIA). He currently serves as President of the Minnesota HIMSS Chapter, where he promotes regional and national initiatives in health IT adoption, innovation, and workforce development.
Dr. Herasevich is frequently invited to speak nationally and internationally on topics including clinical informatics, sepsis surveillance, information visualization, data governance, and the evaluation of health technologies. His more recent interests extend into the fields of information security, machine learning, and computer vision, where he continues to explore novel applications to enhance clinical decision-making and patient care in complex healthcare environments.
Through his pioneering work, Dr. Herasevich has helped shape the evolving landscape of digital health in the ICU and remains a leading voice in the field of clinical informatics, bridging medicine, data science, and systems engineering to improve patient outcomes.
Dr. Herasevich is also part-time CMIO of Ambient Clinical Analytics (http://ambientclinical.com).
Physician Assistant - Brest Medical College. Brest, Belarus. 1991 – 1994
M.D. - Belarusian State Medical University, Minsk, Belarus.1994 – 2000
Cardiology Fellowship - Belarusian Medical Academy of Postgraduate Education, Minsk, Belarus. 2000 – 2003
Ph.D. in applied cardiology – Thesis: "Reaction of a Vascular Wall and Hemostasis System on the Arterial “BY-S-Stent” Stent Implantation". Belarusian Medical Academy of Postgraduate Education, Minsk, Belarus. 2003
Postdoctoral Research Fellow – Cardiac imaging Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, Minnesota, USA 2006 – 2007
Biomedical Informatics. – AMIA 10 by 10 Biomedical Informatics Course. Oregon Health & Science University, Oregon, USA 2008
Postdoctoral Research Fellow – Clinical Informatics Focus Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA 2007 – 2011
Masters of Science, Clinical Research. – Thesis: Syndrome surveillance in the intensive care unit: development of customized rules (data "sniffers") for detecting adverse events and specific time-sensitive patient problems in the ICU.Mayo Graduate School, Rochester, Minnesota, USA 2007 – 2011
