Lawrence S. Phillips MD

Dr. Phillips was educated at Swarthmore College and Harvard Medical School, followed by residency at Rush University Medical Center and fellowship training at Washington University School of Medicine. He is Board-certified in both Internal Medicine and Endocrinology and Metabolism, is listed as one the Best Doctors in America, and he has been a Professor of Medicine at Emory for 31 years. At Emory, he has been Director of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, and Program Director of the General Clinical Research Center. He is currently the Medical Director of the Clinical Studies Center at the Atlanta VA Medical Center. He has been engaged in research, teaching, and the clinical practice of endocrinology for over 40 years, and has published over 200 articles in peer-review journals. He has had funding from the National Institutes of Health for research in physiology, molecular biology, and improving diabetes management.

His clinical research activities currently span a range from proteomics, to state of the art metabolic ward assessment of insulin secretion and insulin sensitivity, epidemiology, medical economics, improvement of health care delivery, and development of strategies to detect diabetes pathophysiology early in its natural history. In recent years, he analyzed decision-making by health care providers and showed that diabetes therapy was often not intensified despite high glucose levels – identified as "clinical inertia". After demonstrating that interventions focused on overcoming clinical inertia led to improved metabolic control in the Grady Diabetes Clinic, he then extended his objectives to a broader patient population. Dr. Phillips developed novel strategies which help to overcome clinical inertia and improve diabetes management in primary care settings as well. He is now involved in a new research thrust to develop accurate, convenient, inexpensive screening to detect prediabetes. His current work at Emory and the VA is aimed to revolutionize diabetes care by permitting a focus on the earliest stages of glucose intolerance – when preventive treatment is most effective and least expensive. He is also co-founder of a startup company, DiaSyst, which is developing diabetes management software.