WASHINGTON, DC – The American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) will present the 2023 Morris F. Collen Award of Excellence to Suzanne R. Bakken, PhD, RN, FAAN, FACMI, FIAHSI, on November 12 during the opening session of the AMIA 2023 Annual Symposium November 11-15 in New Orleans.
In honor of Morris F. Collen, a thought leader in the field of medical informatics, the prestigious award is presented to an individual whose personal commitment and dedication to medical informatics has made a lasting impression on the field. The award is determined by ACMI’s Awards Committee.
"ACMI is thrilled to recognize and congratulate Dr. Bakken on a career of ground-breaking discovery, consistent thought leadership and educational innovation in service to all of biomedical informatics and to AMIA,” said ACMI President Kevin B. Johnson, MD, MS FACMI, FAMIA, FIAHSI, David L. Cohen University Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Computer and Information Science, Pediatrics, and Science Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Bakken is the Alumni Professor of Nursing and Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University where she leads the Center for Community-Engaged Health Informatics and Data Sciences and co-leads the NINR Reducing Health Disparities Through Informatics (RHeaDI) Pre and Post Doctoral Training Program which she initiated in 2002.
Dr. Bakken’s contributions are recognized internationally, and her expertise is sought in diverse corners of the healthcare ecosystem. She is a nurse, a professional pursuit that led her to systems science as an approach to nursing—the ability to scale interventions and help more than a single patient. Her deep commitment to clinical practice and interdisciplinary team science informed by technology has guided her core work focused on patient care outcomes, quality of life, and reducing health disparities. The integration of a health equity lens in the field of informatics has been her life’s work in research, education, training and mentoring future leaders.
Her current role as Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) represents a full-circle professional achievement. She was a published author in the journal’s first 1994 publication—volume one, issue one. To rise to a position of influence as a journal editor impacting the entire field is laudable.
As a mentor with a particular interest in women and people traditionally underrepresented in medicine, she had lifted the careers of hundreds. There is new research and practice conducted today as a direct result of Dr. Bakken’s commitment to training and empowering researchers and clinicians.
Dr. Bakken is also a leader in policy development and is currently a member of the NIH Novel and Exceptional Technology and Research Advisory Committee and is co-leading the NIH ENGAGE Working Group which aims to increase patient and community engagement across the research life cycle.
Her program of research has focused on the intersection of informatics and health equity for more than 30 years and has been funded by the Agency for Healthcare and Research Quality, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR), and the National Library of Medicine. Dr. Bakken is a member of the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Methodology Committee. She previously served on the Board of Regents for the National Library of Medicine.
Dr. Bakken received her doctorate in nursing at the University of California, San Francisco, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in medical informatics at Stanford University.
Dr. Bakken is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, the American College of Medical Informatics, and the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics, and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. Dr. Bakken has received multiple awards for her research, including the Pathfinder Award from the Friends of the National Institute of Nursing Research, the Nursing Informatics Award from the Friends of the National Library of Medicine, the Sigma Theta Tau International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame, the Virginia K. Saba Award from the American Medical Informatics Association, and the Virginia Saba Nursing Informatics Award from Sigma Theta Tau International. She was the first nurse recipient of the Francois Grémy Award of Excellence from the International Medical Informatics Association in 2019.
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ACMI is an honorary College of elected Informatics Fellows from the United States and abroad who have made significant and sustained contributions to the field of medical informatics and who have met rigorous scholarly scrutiny by their peers. Incorporated in 1984, ACMI dissolved its separate corporate status to merge with the American Association for Medical Systems and Informatics (AAMSI) and the Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care (SCAMC), when AMIA was formed in 1989. The College now exists as an entity within AMIA, with its own bylaws and regulations.
AMIA's Annual Symposium presents leading-edge scientific research on biomedical and health informatics, showcasing more than 600 scientific sessions. The Symposium is the largest informatics event worldwide. The work presented spans the spectrum of the informatics field: translational bioinformatics, clinical research informatics, clinical informatics, consumer health informatics and public health informatics.
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