Charles Safran, MD, FACMI, Chief of the Division of Clinical Informatics at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), has received the American College of Medical Informatics' 2014 Morris F. Collen Award in recognition of his commitment to and achievements in medical informatics.
The award is given annually in honor of Morris F. Collen, a pioneer in medical informatics, which concentrates on the use of communications and information technology to advance patient care, teaching and medical research.
Safran is the third BIDMC informatrician to receive the honor, following Warner Slack, MD, and Howard Bleich, MD, who founded of the Division of Clinical Informatics more than 40 years ago. The Division was among the first academic divisions in the world to concentrate on the use of computers for patient care, teaching and medical research.
Under Safran's leadership since 2007, the Division works to improve the quality and reduce the cost of medical care; enhance the quality of medical education; improve the relationship between doctor and patient; and explore innovative approaches to research through computing.
"I am honored to be following in such footsteps and build upon the solid foundation created by Warner and Howard," said Safran, who is also an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. "The clinical informatics program has always been about the care and well-being of our patients and fellow citizens."
Safran is a primary care internist who has devoted his career to improving patient care through the innovative use of informatics. He helped to develop and deploy the integrated clinical computing and electronic health record systems at BIDMC and Brigham & Women's Hospital, two Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals. Safran also developed Baby CareLink, a telemedicine program that incorporates videoconferencing and online technologies to enhance communications between families with premature babies, medical staff and community providers.
He has also designed clinical decision support systems to help clinicians implement care guidelines, select diagnostic strategies for patients with cancer, and treat patients with HIV/AIDS. Currently, he is working to explore how technology can improve family collaboration in the care of elders through the Information Sharing Across Generations and Environments (InfoSAGE) project, with support from the federal government's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Earlier this year, the American Board of Medical Specialties issued the first round of certifications for clinical informatics, a sub-specialty in which physicians use information and communication systems to enhance individual and population health outcomes, improve patient care and strengthen the clinician-patient relationship. Safran, who helped define the core contents of the field and led the delineation of training requirements for the sub-specialty, was among the first physicians to receive board certification.
"ACMI is proud to honor Charles Safran with the Collen Award," said ACMI Chair Alexa McCray, PhD, of Harvard Medical School. "We congratulate Dr. Safran on his accomplishments in improving patient care at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard's teaching hospitals and thank him for the clinical informatics leadership role he has played both throughout his career and recently during the creation of the CI subspecialty of medicine."
"Dr. Safran has had a profound impact on BIDMC and me personally," added John Halamka, MD, BIDMC's Chief Information Officer. "I began my career in his lab and first prototyped our BIDMC web-based systems under his mentorship."
Safran is the past President and Chairman of American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) and was previously Vice President of the International Medical Informatics Association. He is an elected fellow of both the American College of Medical Informatics and the American College of Physicians. He also chairs the Clinical Informatics track for Harvard Medical School master's program in biomedical informatics and National Library of Medicine informatics fellowship. Safran graduated cum laude in mathematics from Tufts University, where he also earned a master's degree in mathematical logic and a Doctor of Medicine degree.
AMIA, the leading professional association for informatics professionals, is the center of action for 5,000 informatics professionals from more than 65 countries. As the voice of the nation's top biomedical and health informatics professionals, AMIA and its members play a leading role in assessing the effect of health innovations on health policy and advancing the field of informatics. AMIA actively supports five domains in informatics: translational bioinformatics, clinical research informatics, clinical informatics, consumer health informatics, and public health informatics.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School and currently ranks third in National Institutes of Health funding among independent hospitals nationwide.
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