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Dr. Irl Hirsch is a professor of medicine and holds the Diabetes Treatment and Teaching Chair at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. He graduated from medical school at the University of Missouri, performed his internal medicine training at the University of Miami and Mt. Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, and completed his endocrinology fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Hirsch has been interested in new technologies for the treatment of diabetes, particularly those involved in the use of insulin therapy.

Dr. Hirsch has also been interested in the mechanisms of how insulin co-modulates inflammation with glucose and how this results in improvements in outcomes, particularly of hospitalized patients. The management of hyperglycemia in the hospital has been an interest of Dr. Hirsch for over 20 years and his current interest is how glucose control may improve outcomes in bone marrow transplant patients.

He also has been an author for both national and international treatment guidelines for inpatient hyperglycemia management. He is currently involved in numerous research studies including several involving the use of real-time glucose sensors and inhaled insulin. He is also currently an investigator in ORIGIN, ACCORD, and SEARCH For Youth in Diabetes. Dr. Hirsch is also interested in understanding how glycemic variability noted on glucose meter and sensor downloads may be an independent risk for microvascular complications. He has a very active clinical practice of which 80% of patients have type 1 diabetes.

He has authored over 100 papers including reviews of insulin in the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA, 40 editorials, numerous book chapters, and four books both for patients and physicians. He is the past editor-in-chief of both DOC News and Clinical Diabetes, past chair of the American Diabetes Association Professional Practice Committee, and recently completed his sixth year of the American Board of Internal Medicine Subspecialty Board of Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Diabetes.