AMIA News

AMIA Announces 2017 Signature Award and Leadership Award Recipients

This year’s Signature Awards and Leadership Awards were presented at the AMIA Leadership Dinner during the AMIA 2017 Annual Symposium, which took place November 4–8 in Washington, D.C.

The symposium draws 2,500 attendees for an event featuring 600-plus papers, panels, and posters. The AMIA Signature Awards program provides an opportunity for AMIA members at different stages of their careers to be recognized for significant contributions to the field of informatics.

“It is an honor to recognize these remarkable leaders in informatics,” says Thomas Payne, MD, FACP, FACMI, AMIA board chair and medical director of IT services at the University of Washington’s UW Medicine. “We celebrate their exceptional accomplishments and commitment to AMIA’s mission."

The AMIA Signature Awards include the following:

• Donald A.B. Lindberg Award for Innovation in Informatics: Wendy W. Chapman, PhD, a professor at the University of Utah;
• Don Eugene Detmer Award for Health Policy Contribution in Informatics: Susan Hull, MSN, RN-BC, NEA-BC, chief nursing informatics officer at Cincinnati Hospital Medical Center;
• Virginia K. Saba Informatics Award: Nicholas Hardiker, RN, PhD, a professor of nursing informatics and associate head (research and innovation) at the University of Salford School of Nursing, Midwifery, Social Work & Social Sciences; and
• New Investigator Award: Marina Sirota, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of California San Francisco.

The AMIA Leadership Awards were awarded to the following:

• Betsy L. Humphreys, MLS, for sustained contributions to the field of biomedical and health informatics and in celebration of her retirement from the National Library of Medicine;
• Frank Naeymi-Rad, PhD, MS, MBA, for championing industry engagement and commitment to the health informatics profession; and
• Howard D. Silverman, MD, MS, for sustained contributions to the field of health informatics and medical education, and a founding member of AMIA’s Community of Clinical Informatics Program Directors.

— Source: AMIA

Carol Friedman, PhD, FACMI, Awarded Morris F. Collen Award of Excellence

The American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) presented the 2017 Morris F. Collen Award of Excellence to Carol Friedman, PhD, FACMI, during the opening session of AMIA’s Annual Symposium in Washington, D.C.

In honor of Morris F. Collen, MD, FACMI, a pioneer in the field of medical informatics, this prestigious award is presented to an individual whose personal commitment and dedication to medical informatics has made a lasting impression on the field. The award is determined by ACMI’s Awards Committee.

Friedman is graduate program director and a professor in the department of biomedical informatics at Columbia University.

“The Morris F. Collen Award is only awarded to the most distinguished informaticians. ACMI is honored to recognize Dr. Friedman for her vision and significant accomplishments,” says ACMI President Christopher G. Chute, MD, DrPH, FACMI, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University. “We are grateful for her impact on the field of biomedical informatics and natural language processing, and her commitment to AMIA’s mission.”

Friedman is recognized within the biomedical domain as a pioneer in natural language processing (NLP). She was the first researcher to demonstrate the value of NLP for a broad range of clinical and biomedical applications. She was also one of the first to demonstrate that a general NLP system could be used to improve patient care.

She has more than 120 publications and holds several patents associated with NLP technology. She has been elected to the ACMI, the National Academy of Medicine, and the New York Academy of Medicine. She has also been honored with the AMIA Donald A.B. Lindberg Award for Innovation in Biomedical Informatics.

AMIA’s Annual Symposium is the premier educational event in the field. The symposium presents leading-edge scientific research on biomedical and health informatics and more than 100 scientific sessions. The symposium presents work from across the spectrum of the informatics field—translational bioinformatics, clinical research informatics, clinical informatics, consumer health informatics, and public health informatics.

— Source: AMIA