Antonino Neil Pappalardo is an American technology entrepreneur and the founder of

MEDITECH Medical Information Technology, Inc., shortened to Meditech, is a privately held Massachusetts-based software and service company that develops and sells information systems for healthcare organizations. History In 1969, Neil Pappalardo began d ...

, a supplier of

information system An information system (IS) is a formal, sociotechnical, organizational system designed to collect, process, Information Processing and Management, store, and information distribution, distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, info ...

software for hospitals headquartered in Massachusetts. Pappalardo co-founded MEDITECH in 1969, with the original name Medical Information Technology Inc. He was one of the original co-developers of the

MUMPS MUMPS ("Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System"), or M, is an imperative, high-level programming language with an integrated transaction processing key–value database. It was originally developed at Massachusetts Gen ...

programming language and system at

Massachusetts General Hospital Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General or MGH) is a teaching hospital located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the original and largest clinical education and research facility of Harvard Medical School/Harvar ...

Early life

Pappalardo is a native of

Rochester, New York Rochester is a city in and the county seat, seat of government of Monroe County, New York, United States. It is the List of municipalities in New York, fourth-most populous city and 10th most-populated municipality in New York, with a populati ...

, born to Sicilian immigrant parents. He graduated in 1960 from

McQuaid Jesuit High School McQuaid Jesuit High School is an all-male, Catholic, Jesuit, college preparatory school run by the USA Northeast Jesuit province of the Society of Jesus in the metropolitan area of Rochester, New York. The school is named Named after Bernard John M ...

and in 1964 received a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

degree in Physics and Electrical Engineering from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

(MIT) in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

, Massachusetts. Pappalardo received a Honorary Doctorate degree from

Suffolk University Suffolk University is a private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. With 7,560 students on all campuses, it is the List of colleges and universities in metropolitan Boston, tenth-largest university ...

in 1996 and an Honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (

KAIST KAIST (originally the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) is a national university, national research university located in Daedeok Innopolis, Daejeon, South Korea. KAIST was established by the Korean government in 1971 as the ...

) in 2007.

Career

Early career

Starting at age 13, he worked summers as a mason before getting a job at

Bausch & Lomb Bausch & Lomb (since 2010 stylized as Bausch + Lomb) is an American-Canadian eye health products company based in Vaughan, Ontario, Canada. It is one of the world's largest suppliers of contact lenses, lens care products, pharmaceuticals, intra ...

designing circuits. Shortly after graduating with his B.S. in 1964, Pappalardo went to work at

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

, Massachusetts after meeting Dr. G. Octo Barnett, MD during his MIT thesis work. There, he worked in Barnett’s lab within the Laboratory of Computer Science on a “hospital computer project” in conjunction with Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc (BBN), a research and computing consulting firm.

MUMPS

The project at Massachusetts General Hospital would become the MGH Utility Multi-Programming System (MUMPS) and later the Meditech Interpretive Information System (MIIS), developed between 1964 and 1971. Papplardo is credited with co-development alongside Barnett, Robert Greenes, and Curt Marble. The MUMPS programming language was supported with a grant from the National Center for Health Services Research and a contract from the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...

(NIH).

MEDITECH

Pappalardo cofounded MEDITECH (originally Medical Information Technology Inc.) in 1968 with Barnett, Marble, Morton Ruderman, and Jerome Grossman and opened for business in the August 1969. The company’s first headquarters were located in

East Cambridge, Massachusetts East Cambridge is a neighborhood of Cambridge, Massachusetts. East Cambridge is bounded by the Charles River and the Charlestown, Boston, Charlestown neighborhood of Boston on the east, the Somerville, Massachusetts, Somerville border on the no ...

; they moved to Westwood, Massachusetts in 1983. Pappalardo served as CEO and President until 1994, when he became

Chairman The chair, also chairman, chairwoman, or chairperson, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the gro ...

. , Pappalardo serves as Founder, Chairman, and Board Member.

Personal life

Pappalardo lives in Boston, Massachusetts with his wife, Jane. They met during his senior year at MIT, and married in 1964. They have four children including Missy, born August 4, 1969, the same day that MEDITECH was launched. Pappalardo is a life member emeritus of the MIT Corporation. Since 1999, Pappalardo has supported physicists in MIT’s Department of Physics via a postdoctoral research fellowship, the Pappalardo Fellowships in Physics.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pappalardo, Neil American chief executives American health care chief executives American technology chief executives Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Businesspeople from Rochester, New York