Presentation of Morris F. Collen Award to professors Howard Bleich and Warner Slack.

Abstract

The Morris Collen Award is given each year, when appropriate, to pioneers in the field of medical informatics who best exemplify the teaching and practice of Dr. Morris Collen. This year's co-recipients, Drs. Howard Bleich and Warner Slack, who have been co-presidents of the Center for Clinical Computing at Harvard Medical School and collaborators for nearly 30 years, have pioneered work in the field of medical consultation, patient–computer dialogue, and hospital-wide clinical computing systems. The work of these two has taken place principally at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital. Howard Bleich arrived at Harvard and Beth Israel in 1967; he was joined by Warner Slack in 1970. Since then, the two Harvard professors have created, among other things, an integrated hospital computing system that is a model for many other institutions. Howard Bleich was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1934 but grew up in Washington, D.C., where his father worked for the Washington Terminal Company and his mother ran a dry cleaning and laundry business. He was the oldest of three sons, all of whom became doctors. His childhood interest in chemistry included synthesizing organic explosives. He graduated from George Washington University and then went on to get his medical degree from Emory University. Further up the east coast, Warner Slack was born in East Orange, New Jersey, in 1933. His father was a nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project. The family moved to Pennsylvania, and Warner graduated from Mount Lebanon High School, where he minored in basketball and football. At Princeton, he played junior varsity football and picked up his degree and then got his medical degree from Columbia. Both Howard and Warner served in the Air Force in the '60s. Warner was with a M.A.S.H. unit at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, and Howard served …