Dave Barnes is an outside-the-box thinker, a trait that has helped him succeed during four decades of working at UT Southwestern.

Back when he joined the Medical Center in 1983 as a Medical Technologist, Mr. Barnes never dreamed of the opportunities that awaited him. By embracing new challenges and welcoming unexpected career turns, he quickly benefited from unique opportunities for learning and growth.

As a Business Analyst and Architect Lead in Information Resources, Mr. Barnes serves as one of the go-to people for help to navigate the Epic electronic health record (EHR) system. He provides front-end support for laboratory work, support for order processing, and recently expanded the scope of his responsibilities to include assistance for integration between UTSW Epic and external genomics laboratories.

He is very proud to be associated with UT Southwestern, which is recognized in the Epic community as a leader whose standards have set a high bar for other institutions.

“My career at UTSW has been and continues to be a continuous process of opportunities to develop creative solutions for challenging requests; to learn from and collaborate with truly talented and creative staff; and, in the end, to come out more than I was when I began. It has been most rewarding. I especially value all of those with whom I have worked and from whom I have learned so much,” he says.

Mr. Barnes joined UTSW’s Epic team when inpatient computerized physician order entry was implemented. Since then, Epic has become progressively more sophisticated, focusing on tools that assist clinician decision-making, make electronic data entry and ordering easier, meet complex governmental reporting requirements, enable patient-focused workflows, and improve engagement with patients through features including telehealth, billing, scheduling, and e-prescriptions.

He sees exciting innovations in Epic’s future. “Epic is evolving toward a faster, more user-friendly environment, including increasingly sophisticated support for mobile devices. In the coming years, Epic may leverage artificial intelligence to provide advanced clinical decision support,” he says.

After earning an undergraduate degree in biology at Iowa State University, Mr. Barnes graduated from the former St. Paul University Hospital’s School of Medical Technology.

He is intrigued with paleoecology – the study of past ecosystems using fossil data – because “putting a multitude of clues together to gain a picture of the deep past fascinates me.” He enjoys collecting fossils and studying medieval history, especially eighth-century and tenth-century France. He and his wife, Mary, share their lives with four cats: Hercule, Boudica, Digby, and Cugel.