The University of Kentucky College of Health Sciences recently welcomed Tony Faiola, Ph.D., as the new associate dean of research and scholarship. In this role, Faiola is responsible for fostering research and scholarship productivity and aiding in the strategic direction of the college’s research mission. 

“The University of Kentucky is a premier research institution,” Faiola said. “I have two loves and two passions: administration and research. I have developed several programs from the ground up and am excited to have a direct impact on research in the College of Health Sciences.”

“My goal is to increase the productivity of the faculty, to excite them, inspire them and incentivize them to achieve new levels of excellence,” Faiola continued. “I look forward to taking on this new role.”

Prior to coming to the University of Kentucky, Faiola was professor and head of the Department of Biomedical and Health Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). He received his master’s degree from The Ohio State University and his doctorate from Purdue University.

Faiola’s diverse education – and prior work background leading up to the associate dean position – has been nothing short of innovative, creative and groundbreaking for the health information technology industry.

His personal research focuses on the cognitive and behavioral aspects of clinicians, patients and family caregivers in their use of mobile and telehealth information technology (mHealth). Using empirically grounded methods, Faiola has informed the design and development of mHealth that support self-monitoring, communication and a range of data collection and analytics.

“Mobile health has evolved extensively in the past years. There was no mobile health before the iPhone,” Faiola said. “Apple has helped to launch the field, however, before that, there was telehealth which was more based around communicating with providers through PCs. It was mainly physician to physician and not so much the physician to patient communication like we have now.”

While Faiola’s research resides at the intersection of the health and social sciences and human-centered computing, the focus is on the translational application of how mHealth data can foster healthy lifestyle behavior and rehabilitation.

Outcomes of Faiola’s research include more than 120 refereed papers and extended abstracts, as well as more than 100 presentations and keynotes in the U.S., Europe, Russia, India, China and Saudi Arabia.  As both principal and co-principal investigator, he has secured external funding from the National Science Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Walther Cancer Institute and the Fulbright Institute.

Faiola has taught more than 1,000 students at every level. Many of the students he mentored now hold positions at the National Institutes of Health, Roche, Eli Lilly, Merek, the Mayo Clinic, Motorola Mobile Division, Yahoo, Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft.