John Greist

John Greist is one of the pioneers of computerized medicine. In 1973, at the University of Wisconsin, he and his colleagues built a pioneering computer interview for risk prediction - work that helped establish a principle the Association now carries into every field: that a system earns trust through evidence, validation, and candor, not authority alone.

He is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, and Research Professor (Volunteer) in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita. His university and publisher biographies credit him with more than 300 professional journal articles, book chapters, and books.

His research helped pioneer computer-administered assessment and therapy across four decades: a comparison of computer- and interviewer-administered diagnostic interviews (1987); one of the first randomized trials of computer-administered cognitive behavior therapy for depression (1990); a computer-administered version of the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale; interactive-voice-response administration of standard rating scales at scale; and - most distinctively - computer-guided behavior therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder, evaluated in a multi-site randomized trial (2002). A recurring finding across this work, and across computerized interviewing since the 1960s, is that people often answer a computer more candidly than a clinician.

In 1979 he helped found Human Services Computing - with Judith Faulkner, who had studied computing in medicine under Warner Slack, and several others - the Madison company renamed Epic Systems in 1983; he served on its board until 1983. He also founded PRN Systems and Healthcare Technology Systems, and serves as Chairman of the Board and Chief Medical Officer of Meret Solutions, the Association’s founding sponsor.