Kin Wah Fung, M.D., M.S., M.B.A. Closed Now

Dr. Kin Wah Fung, M.D., M.S., M.B.A., is a leading figure in biomedical informatics, specializing in clinical terminologies, controlled vocabularies, and health data standards. His work has been instrumental in advancing semantic interoperability within electronic health records (EHRs) and across healthcare systems worldwide.

Currently, Dr. Fung serves as a Staff Scientist at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he works on the development and maintenance of key clinical terminologies and classification systems. His contributions are essential to the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS), a cornerstone resource that integrates multiple biomedical vocabularies and standards to enable effective data sharing and interoperability.

One of Dr. Fung’s most impactful areas of research is the integration and harmonization of clinical terminologies such as SNOMED CT, LOINC, ICD, and RxNorm. By aligning these vocabularies, he has helped facilitate semantic mapping and coding accuracy, enabling consistent representation of patient data across diverse health IT systems. His efforts have directly supported public health reporting, clinical decision support, and biomedical research.

Dr. Fung’s publications highlight his expertise in ontology alignment, natural language processing (NLP), and standards-based informatics infrastructures. He has also contributed to advancing consumer health vocabularies, improving patient access to understandable health information.

His interdisciplinary training—combining medicine, computer science, and business—has positioned him uniquely to bridge gaps between clinical practice, technical innovation, and policy implementation. Within the NLM and the broader informatics community, Dr. Fung is recognized as a key architect of modern health data standards and an advocate for global collaboration in biomedical informatics.