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Dr. Hoffman named Site Miner at VA Boston Healthcare System

Brian B. Hoffman, MD, has been named site miner for the VA Boston Healthcare System, the newest institution to join the CIMIT Consortium. He is a former chief of medicine with the local VA system and is currently a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

VA BHS is comprised of three campuses and six outpatient locations in the Boston area, and is a vital part of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administration. VA has a national patient population of 6 million, with about 400,000 Iraq veterans. VA BHS cares for a base of 65,000 patients with about 11,500 inpatient and 600,000 outpatient visits annually. VA BHS has one of the largest research programs in VA, and is a national leader in the field of electronic records.

Brian B. Hoffman, MD, graduated in Medicine from McGill University. After completing residency training in Medicine and in Clinical Pharmacology he undertook a research fellowship at Duke University. He joined the faculty at Stanford University in 1981, where he went on to hold numerous leadership posts. He moved to Boston in 2003 and served as Chief of Medicine at VA Boston Health Care System from 2004 to 2008.

His research interests are largely related to the actions of the sympathetic nervous system on target cells. His research has focused primarily on elucidating signal transduction mechanisms by which adrenaline causes blood vessel contraction and promotes cell growth. In addition, he has applied these interests to questions involving the pharmacology of adrenaline and related drugs in normal human subjects and in patients with diseases such as hypertension. Dr. Hoffman is an active clinician and teacher of bedside medicine. In addition to his research publications, he has edited leading textbooks in both clinical pharmacology and in pharmacology.

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