The Association for Veterinary Informatics honors its 2020 award recipient

December 8, 2020

dvm360 Staff

The AVI recognized the winner of the 2020 Allen W. Hahn Lifetime Achievement award, given only to those who use their informatics knowledge to better the veterinary profession.

The Association for Veterinary Informatics (AVI) has named Jeff Wilcke, DVM, MS, Dipl. ACVPM, as the recipient of the 2020 Allen W. Hahn Lifetime Achievement award. This honor is presented to individuals who have dedicated their careers to becoming pioneers in the field of veterinary informatics through education and leadership.

“His influence on the growth of the veterinary informatics field is undeniable, and his tenacity for keeping veterinary medicine ‘at the table’ of developing standards over the years has brought us to a place where we can begin to realize some of the goals of interconnectivity in veterinary medicine, and offered by the informatics field,” says the AVI, in the release.

Wilcke has a lengthy history in the veterinary field. After receiving his degree in 1978 from Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine, he pursued clinical pharmacology and completed his residency in 1982 at The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Post-graduation, Wilcke accepted a faculty position at the Virginia Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine (VMCVM), where he spent the remainder of his career.

After the tragic loss of his colleague and friend, Dick Talbot, the founding dean of VMCVM, Wilcke immersed himself in the emerging field of veterinary informatics, according to an AVI press release. Wilcke then inherited the position of director of information resources and head of the Drug Information Lab, which, under his leadership, became the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine Greenbook. He also is credited for his assistance in transferring the Center for Veterinary Medicine Greenbook from a printed publication to an online interactive database, known as Drugs@FDA.

Additionally, Wilcke is the secretariat and an editorial board member at SNOMED International and the Chairman of SNOMED’s Organism and Infectious Diseases Committee, unveiling groundbreaking collaborations with different organizations to promote the use of informatics in veterinary medicine.