Presentation of the Morris F. Collen Award to Donald A. B. Lindberg, MD.

Abstract

The American College of Medical Informatics is an honorary society established to recognize those who have made sustained contributions to the field. Since its founding in 1984, 170 fellows have been elected to the College. Its highest award, for lifetime achievement and contributions to the discipline of medical informatics, is the Morris F. Collen, MD, award. Dr. Collen's own efforts as a pioneer in the field stand as the embodiment of creativity, intellectual rigor, perserverence, and personal integrity. And so it is that the College gives its highest recognition to those whose attainments have, throughout their careers, substantially advanced the science and art of medical informatics. The College is proud to announce that the 1997 recipient of the Collen award is Dr. Donald A. B. Lindberg. Born of Swedish–American parents in 1933, Don Lindberg grew up in Brooklyn, New York. An honors graduate of the Polytechnic Prep School in Brooklyn, he attended Amherst College, where he majored in applied mathematics and graduated magna cum laude in 1954. He returned to New York to attend the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, and received his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1958. After an internship and residency in pathology at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, he joined the pathology department faculty of the University of Missouri School of Medicine in Columbia, Missouri, in 1960. With the support of Dr. Vern Wilson, Dean of the School of Medicine, young Dr. Lindberg was soon engaged in the unprecedented activity of computerizing the clinical pathology laboratory services for the medical center. He developed applications to improve the speed, quality, and consistency of laboratory results reporting. He developed expert systems to assist in pathologic diagnosis and began publishing articles in the field that would become known as Medical Informatics. By the mid-1960s, he had garnered …