Morris Frank Collen (November 12, 1913 – September 14, 2014) was founder of the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research and an original member of the

Permanente Medical Group Kaiser Permanente (; KP) is an American integrated managed care consortium headquartered in Oakland, California. Founded in 1945 by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser and physician Sidney R. Garfield, the organization was initially established to p ...

, pioneering developer of Automated Multiphasic Health Testing (AMHT) systems, and

Electronic Health Records An electronic health record (EHR) is the systematized collection of electronically stored patient and population health information in a digital format. These records can be shared across different health care settings. Records are shared thro ...

(EHRs) for Public Health and Clinical Screening, serving as a model for pre-paid healthcare at the national level. Collen was a Founder of the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) in 1984, and the

American Medical Informatics Association The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), is an American non-profit organization dedicated to the development and application of biomedical and health informatics in the support of patient care, teaching, research, and health care ad ...

(AMIA) in 1989. The Morris F. Collen Award of Excellence was established in his honor by ACMI in 1993. In 1971 Collen was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

(now the

National Academy of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), known as the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineerin ...

Biography

Collen was born and grew up in

St. Paul, Minnesota Saint Paul (often abbreviated St. Paul) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 311,527, making it Minnesota's second-most populous city a ...

, attending the Mechanics Arts High School, followed by undergraduate studies in engineering at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

, later receiving an MD degree at the Medical School. After a residency at Los Angeles County General Hospital, Collen joined surgeon

Sidney Garfield Sidney R. Garfield (April 17, 1906 – December 29, 1984) was an American physician and a pioneer of health maintenance organizations. He co-founded the Kaiser Permanente healthcare system with businessman Henry J. Kaiser. He graduated from ...

as original founding physicians in the

sponsored by the prominent industrialist

Henry J. Kaiser Henry John Kaiser (May 9, 1882 – August 24, 1967) was an American industrialist who became known for his shipbuilding and construction projects, then later for his involvement in fostering modern American health care. Prior to World War II, ...

. 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 Liberty ships were a class of cargo ship built in the United States during World War II under the Emergency Shipbuilding Program. Although British in concept, the design was adopted by the United States for its simple, low-cost construction. ...

.” For more information on Morris F. Collen's life see: Engineering Computerized Multiphasic Health Screening - A 2005 Interview with Morris F. Collen. 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 Operations research () (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a branch of applied mathematics that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve management and ...

, and medical skills to build computational clinical care and biomedical research resources for preventive medicine. 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. 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 The American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) is a college of elected fellows from the United States and abroad who have made significant and sustained contributions to the field of medical informatics. Initially incorporated in 1984, the o ...

(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. In 1989, he helped found the

(AMIA) 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 The International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) is an independent organization that plays a role in promoting and furthering the application of information science in modern society, particularly in the fields of healthcare, bioscience ...

(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. 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.”

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Collen, Morris F. 1913 births 2014 deaths Health informaticians Members of the National Academy of Medicine University of Minnesota Medical School alumni 20th-century American physicians 21st-century American physicians Physicians from Minnesota People from Saint Paul, Minnesota University of Southern California people