Kenneth Melmon, 67; Ex-Chief of Stanford’s School of Medicine

Dr. Kenneth L. Melmon, 67, a noted pharmacologist, founder of an online information service for physicians and former chairman of the department of medicine at Stanford University, died April 8 of a heart attack at his home in Woodside, Calif.

A second-generation San Francisco native, he was a graduate of Stanford and the UC San Francisco School of Medicine. He was chief of UC San Francisco’s clinical pharmacology division for 13 years before joining the Stanford faculty in 1978.

Melmon served as chief of the department of medicine at Stanford until 1984, when he was censured by a university ethics committee for “grossly negligent scholarship.”

He resigned as department head after acknowledging that he had failed to secure permission to use material from a book he helped edit in writing the chapter of another textbook. Melmon remained on the Stanford faculty with no loss of tenure or other responsibilities until assuming emeritus status in 2000. During his last seven years, he also served as associate dean for postgraduate medical education.

In his last years at Stanford, he led an effort to develop software for an online service providing physicians with access to medical textbooks, clinical journals and drug databases.

Called Skolar M.D., it allows users to search for answers to clinical questions. Melmon was chief medical officer of the independent technology company that offers the service.