Frisch receives ACCE-HIMSS excellence award

Paul H. Frisch, PhD, received the 2012 ACCE-HIMSS Excellence in Clinical Engineering and Information Technology Synergies Award, which recognizes individuals who have best demonstrated leadership in promoting or implementing significant synergies between the clinical engineering and information technology professions.

Award recipients also must be members in good standing of both organizations. Nominees for the award are honored for professional or technical contributions to the professions, such as research, development of a new process or product, a paper of significance, and “trailblazing" work in a new application of clinical engineering and IT.                        

The Health Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS) and the American College of Clinical Engineering (ACCE) both sponsor the award.

Frisch has more than 30 years of professional experience and contributions to the field and is a long-standing of member of both organizations. He has educated clinical staff, administration and hospital thought leaders about diverse technologies and the synergies required to develop, deploy and manage complex systems in the healthcare setting.

As a faculty member and chief of biomedical engineering in the department of medical physics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, and a visiting professor at Binghamton University, Frisch is also a researcher. One of his research interests has been the transition of clinical devices from stand-alone to networked systems sharing and distributing information between clinical applications and devices. He has extensively researched how these devices have expanded their functionality to use wireless technologies as a medium for conveying this critical information. As these clinical devices and systems transition between the boundaries of engineering and information technology, it becomes critical for the industry to develop a strong synergy between information technologies and biomedical/clinical engineering.

To further demonstrate this complex interaction, Frisch designed the Intelligent Hospital Pavilion, an interactive exhibit first introduced at HIMSS11 which educated the healthcare industry about the many applications of RFID and RTLS technologies integrated within clinical scenarios, including the required synergy between information technologies and biomedical/clinical engineering.

Frisch will be honored during the 2013 Annual HIMSS Conference & Exhibition in March in New Orleans.