Morris Frank Collen[1] (November 12, 1913 – September 14, 2014) was founder of the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research and an original member of the Permanente Medical Group,[2] pioneering developer of Automated Multiphasic Health Testing (AMHT) systems,[3] and Electronic Health Records (EHRs) for Public Health and Clinical Screening,[4] serving as a model for pre-paid healthcare at the national level.[5] Collen was a Founder of the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) in 1984,[6] and the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)[7] in 1989. The Morris F. Collen Award of Excellence was established in his honor by ACMI in 1993.[8] In 1971 Collen was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences (now the National Academy of Medicine).
Biography
editCollen was born and grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, attending the Mechanics Arts High School, followed by undergraduate studies in engineering at the University of Minnesota, later receiving an MD degree at the Medical School. After a residency at Los Angeles County General Hospital, Collen joined surgeon Sidney Garfield as original founding physicians in the Permanente Medical Group sponsored by the prominent industrialist Henry J. Kaiser.[9] During World War 2 they cared for shipyards employees with clinical and preventive large-scale industrial healthcare using indexed information records and management systems which enabled these essential workers to deliver a virtually uninterrupted flow of the over 1,500 “Liberty Ships.”[10] For more information on Morris F. Collen's life see: Engineering Computerized Multiphasic Health Screening - A 2005 Interview with Morris F. Collen. [11]
After the War, the Kaiser Permanente medical group was established as one of the first general medical group practices in the USA, with Collen’s development of punched-card computer-based Multiphasic Screening growing to include data from physical examinations, comprehensive laboratory and electrophysiological testing, x-ray imaging, and a self-administered medical history. Collen became Medical Director of the West Bay Division of Kaiser Permanente and Physician in Chief, San Francisco, and founder and Director of the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research, which developed methods for health data analysis and management, and a first prototype of a well-structured electronic health record. With data gathered from the practice, Collen organized and built a unique database for research in methods of preventive care, initially focusing on chronic diseases. Collen combined his engineering, operations research, and medical skills to build computational clinical care and biomedical research resources for preventive medicine.[10][12] This was a precursor for computer-based informatics models that strongly influenced the development of hospital information systems, and contributed to the shift, nationally and internationally, from a purely clinical focus to one that spanned biomedical research to public health care, including preventive medicine.[13][14][15] These in turn led the way to the more advanced medical information technology and informatics methods that came of age after the internet and the World Wide Web led to widespread adoption of informatics methods in healthcare.
After retiring from active medical practice at Kaiser Permanente, Collen was instrumental in founding US national medical informatics professional societies: the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) in 1984, which established the first honorary college of Fellows for scholars and investigators in the interdisciplinary fields bringing together practitioners in medicine, nursing, and healthcare with engineers, computer scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, and the many life scientists working on clinical and biomedical informatics.[6] In 1989 he helped found the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)[7] by bringing together several former disparate professional organizations, including ACMI. In 1993 ACMI established an annual Morris F. Collen Award of Excellence. Collen was also most active in promoting collaborations with other leaders of biomedical informatics worldwide, chairing the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Medical Informatics Congress (MEDINFO) 1980 Tokyo Program Committee. Collen summarized advances and contributions of medical informatics in the book A History of Medical Informatics in the United States, updated and co-edited and co-authored posthumously in 2015.[16] Collen established and secured the foundations for medical informatics in the US and helped nurture and lead its evolution for over 50 years, so it is not surprising that in celebrating his 100th birthday in 2013 he was called “The Father of Medical Informatics.”[17]
References
edit- ^ Yardley, William (2014-10-05). "Morris Collen, Pioneer in Computerized Medicine, Dies at 100". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-10-28.
- ^ Safran, Charles (2015). "Celebrating Morris F. Collen (1913-2014)". Yearbook of Medical Informatics. 24 (1): 02–04. doi:10.1055/s-0038-1638944. ISSN 0943-4747. S2CID 74202251.
- ^ Weinerman, E. Richard; Breslow, Lester; Belloc, Nedra B.; Waybur, Anne; Milmore, Benno K. (1952). "Multiphasic Screening of Longshoremen with Organized Medical Follow-Up". American Journal of Public Health and the Nation's Health. 42 (12): 1552–1567. doi:10.2105/ajph.42.12.1552. ISSN 0002-9572. PMC 1526306. PMID 13007868.
- ^ Roberts, Dean W. (1956-08-11). "Multiple Screening in the Baltimore Study of Chronic Illness". Journal of the American Medical Association. 161 (15): 1442–1446. doi:10.1001/jama.1956.02970150010003. ISSN 0002-9955. PMID 13345603.
- ^ Garfield, Sidney R. (1970-11-12). "Multiphasic Health Testing and Medical Care as a Right". New England Journal of Medicine. 283 (20): 1087–1089. doi:10.1056/NEJM197011122832006. ISSN 0028-4793. PMID 5470852.
- ^ a b "FACMI Group". amia.org. Retrieved 2023-10-28.
- ^ a b "AMIA - American Medical Informatics Association". amia.org. 2023-11-11. Retrieved 2023-10-28.
- ^ "Morris F. Collen Award of Excellence | AMIA - American Medical Informatics Association". amia.org. Retrieved 2023-10-28.
- ^ "Our Founder - Morris F. Collen, MD". Kaiser Permanente Division of Research. Retrieved 2023-10-28.
- ^ a b Collen, Morris; Meeker, Martin, eds. (2007). Morris Collen: Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Oral History Project II Year 1 Theme: Evidence-based Medicine. Berkeley, CA: Regional Oral History Office.
- ^ "Conversations with Medical Informatics Pioneers: An Oral History Collection - Engineering Computerized Multiphasic Health Screening" (PDF). National Library of Medicine - Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications=en-US. Interviewed by Sittig, Dean. Retrieved 2023-12-21.
- ^ Collen, Morris F.; Linden, Corinne (1955). "Screening in a group practice prepaid medical care plan". Journal of Chronic Diseases. 2 (4): 400–408. doi:10.1016/0021-9681(55)90181-8. PMID 13263377.
- ^ Holland, B; Holland, P M; Hsieh, R K (1975). "Automated multiphasic health testing. Diagnostic and testing results obtained at the Health Evaluation Center. Public Health Service Hospital, Baltimore". Public Health Reports. 90 (2): 133–139. ISSN 0033-3549. PMC 1435400. PMID 805446.
- ^ Oldfield, H. R. (1978). "Automated Multiphasic Health Testing A Diagnosis in Three Parts". Journal of Clinical Engineering. 3 (2): 113–118. doi:10.1097/00004669-197804000-00003. ISSN 0363-8855. PMID 10308307. S2CID 23294979.
- ^ November, Joseph Adam (2012). Biomedical computing: digitizing life in the United States. Johns Hopkins university studies in historical and political science. Baltimore (Md.): Johns Hopkins university press. ISBN 978-1-4214-0468-4.
- ^ Collen, Morris Frank; Ball, Marion J., eds. (2015). A history of medical informatics in the United States. Health informatics (2nd ed.). London: Springer. ISBN 978-1-4471-6731-0.
- ^ Lindberg, D. A. B.; Ball, M. J. (2013). "Morris F. Collen at 100: A Tribute to "The Father of Medical Informatics"". Methods of Information in Medicine. 52 (5): 371–373. doi:10.1055/s-0038-1627061. ISSN 0026-1270. PMID 24114266. S2CID 39167435.