Sharon McAvinue began her career at Johns Hopkins as a research nurse in 1988. She continued in that position until 1991, when she became a clinical nurse in the Johns Hopkins Adult HIV Outpatient Service. Starting in 1995, she sought ways to use the Internet to disseminate the most recent expert advice on the treatment of HIV/AIDS. Her leadership was instrumental in transforming the AIDS Service’s Moore News from a local HIV newsletter into the Hopkins HIV Report, an internationally known and respected HIV resource.

In 1996, McAvinue began developing the Hopkins HIV Web site, an educational forum that now receives over 150,000 visitors per month looking for the latest information on the diagnosis, treatment and epidemiology of HIV/AIDS. She used the experience and skills she developed during this project to assist Hopkins faculty from other divisions and departments within the School of Medicine find funding for and develop their own Web sites.

Since her appointment in 1995 as director of program development for the Division of Infectious Diseases, she has raised over $10 million in the form of educational grants from pharmaceutical companies for various Hopkins disease- or specialty-based Internet education initiatives. While in the position, she conceived of and led the initiative to create a sophisticated PC and pocket computer-based tool designed to help physicians prescribe antibiotics according to the most recent and most scientifically valid guidelines This project, called the Johns Hopkins Antibiotics Guide, was launched in April 2001. It is now part of the overall Hopkins POC.IT (Point of Care, Information Technology) program. McAvinue is now director of this program.

Walter F. Atha, M.D., completed his residency in emergency medicine at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in June 1998, after graduating from the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Before enrolling in medical school, Dr. Atha directed the development and maintenance of several large databases for the Health Resources and Services Administration and for the National AIDS Network, a national nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C.

While caring for patients in the setting of frontline emergency medicine, he recognized the potential use of electronic media to deliver critical medical information in a useful manner. In the beginning of 1999, Atha was approached by McAvinue and asked to become director of a project to create a sophisticated PC and pocket computer-based tool designed to assist physicians in prescribing antibiotics. Since then, he has been responsible for overseeing both the creation of the contents and maintenance of this project, called the Johns Hopkins Antibiotics Guide. This project was launched in April 2001. Atha is currently on the faculty of both Emergency Medicine and Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In addition to medicine, Dr. Atha holds a degree in piano performance.