Collen Award Goes to NLP Pioneer Carol Friedman

The American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) will present the 2017 Morris F. Collen Award of Excellence to Carol Friedman, Ph.D., during the AMIA Annual Symposium, which will take place Nov. 4–8 in Washington, D.C.

Named in honor of Morris F. Collen, a pioneer in the field of medical informatics, the award is presented to an individual whose personal commitment and dedication to medical informatics has made a lasting impression on the field.

Friedman is the graduate program director and professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University.

“The Morris F. Collen Award is only awarded to the most distinguished informaticians. ACMI is honored to recognize Dr. Friedman for her vision and significant accomplishments,” said ACMI President Christopher G. Chute, M.D., Dr.PH, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University, in a statement. “We are grateful for her impact on the field of biomedical informatics and natural language processing, and her commitment to AMIA’s mission. “ 

Friedman is recognized within the biomedical domain as a pioneer in natural language processing (NLP). She was the first researcher to demonstrate the value of NLP for a broad range of clinical and biomedical applications. She was also one of the first to demonstrate that a general NLP system could be used to improve patient care.

She has more than 120 publications and holds several patents associated with NLP technology. She has been elected to the American College of Medical Informatics, the National Academy of Medicine, and the New York Academy of Medicine. She has also been honored with the AMIA Donald A.B. Lindberg Award for Innovation in Biomedical Informatics.