Bill Harten, founder of UNIConnect, to speak at Medical Automation Conference 09
Bill Harten founded UNIConnect in 1997 and is the creator of the UNIFlow process definition language, processtracking database, and UNIFlow quality compliance engine. This technology has been used by Myriad Genetics, Celera Genomics, Illumina, Sorenson Genomics, Southern Research Institute, Nelson Labs and ARUP Labs.
Earlier he created the GEDCOM format used to exchange computerized genealogical information and campaigned globally for its establishment as a standard, resulting in its use in almost every genealogical database product written since 1985, including hundreds worldwide.
He invented the high-performance database technology used in the LDS Church’s FamilySearch genealogical database (the world’s largest genealogical database) and is recognized in the database community as a world expert on database architectures for extreme computing requirements. He has developed several high-performance engines for matching complex genetic profiles and genealogies, including an experimental project that reduced the time to search for matches in the FBI’s nationwide criminal DNA database from the FBI’s required target of one hour search time on a large computer down to one tenth of a second on a laptop.
He holds US patent 6904412 for an invention that uses artificial intelligence concepts to implement a comprehensive legal and regulatory compliance and workflow engine for the mortgage industry, enabling and documenting compliance with all federal requirements plus the bewildering different requirements of all 50 US states.
He has lectured widely, consulted, and taught advanced courses on LIMS, informatics, and genealogical computing across North America and Europe. He has published recommendations on good informatics practices at the request of the US National Archives in Washington D.C. and consulted on good informatics practices at the request of the Russian National Archives at their repository in St. Petersburg.
He is active in presenting and publishing papers in the laboratory and genealogical technology communities and is serving this year on the program committee reviewing papers submitted for the Genealogy Technology Workshop this year at Brigham Young University. He earned an MS degree in Computer Science and BS in Accounting from Brigham Young University in 1977, is a Sun-certified java developer and has completed post-graduate work in artificial intelligence at the University of Utah.