Future of Health Technology - Awards
Recipients of Future of Health Technology Awards
 
Future of Health Technology Award 2008
Professor Alex (Sandy) Pentland
2008 Future of Health Technology Award is in the form of a statue of Pegasus with crystal eyes and one extra nano-diamond eye in the middle of the forehead to reflect supernatural abilities that future health technology will give to human race. Apollo Diamond provided the man-made natural diamond. 
In Greek mythology, Pegasus is regarded as the horse of Muses, and has always been at the service of creative minds. And so the story is told of a handsome youth who jumped on the back of a horse that unfolded the splendor of a mighty set of wings and soared towards the heavens where he can still be seen as the star constellation, Pegasus. 
Recipients of the Future of Health Technology Awards are the ones inspiring others to make the Earth a better place for human race: reducing suffering, maximizing the potential for self-realization of the human kind and extending human potential with technology. The award is presented at the annual Future of Health Technology Dinner during Future of Health Technology Summit™.
It is my great pleasure to announce that inventor and author Professor Alex Pentland is the 2008 Future of Health Technology Award Honoree. 
Professor Pentland, just like Pegasus with the third diamond eye, can see future otherwise invisible to the human kind. Just like Pegasus with two extra wings, he can fly into the unknown destiny of the human race. I suspect that he has two hearts instead of one to feel the unexpressed longing of humans to live longer and very different lives. His work exemplified by projects like “memory glasses” and “depression meter” and recent book “Honest Signals” truly improve human condition and revolutionize the way we live and relate to one another.
   
  Future of Health Technology Award 2007
Dr Raymond Kurzweil
Ray Kurzweil has been described as “the restless genius” by the Wall Street Journal, and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes. Inc. magazine ranked him #8 among entrepreneurs in the United States, calling him the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison,” and PBS included Ray as one of 16 “revolutionaries who made America,” along with other inventors of the past two centuries.
As one of the leading inventors of our time, Ray was the principal developer of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition. Ray’s web site Kurzweil AI.net <http://www.kurzweilai.net> has over one million readers.
Among Ray’s many honors, he is the recipient of the $500,000 MIT-Lemelson Prize, the world's largest for innovation. In 1999, he received the National Medal of Technology, the nation's highest honor in technology, from President Clinton in a White House ceremony. And in 2002, he was inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame , established by the US Patent Office .
He has received thirteen honorary Doctorates and honors from three U.S. presidents.
Ray has written five books, four of which have been national best sellers. The Age of Spiritual Machines has been translated into 9 languages and was the #1 best selling book on Amazon in science. Ray’s latest book, The Singularity is Near, was a New York Times best seller, and has been the #1 book on Amazon in both science and philosophy. 
  
 Future of Health Technology Award 2006
Eric Dishman 
General Manager & Global Director, Intel Health Research & Innovation Group
Principal Research Scientist, Intel Corporation
National Chair, Center for Aging Services Technologies

Eric is a great thinker and leader changing the way we live. Through his determination and emotional stamina pioneering research on home health technologies for families struggling with cognitive decline, cancer, & cardiovascular disease has been conducted at Intel since 1999. His quest for improving conditions for those who suffer had great impact on other leaders making “technologically enabled caring” an important new field. 
His lab’s most recent research focuses on in-home sensor network technologies for assisting people who are dealing with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
He is a nationally known author and speaker—and advises numerous companies, universities, & Congressional members—on assistive technologies, telemedicine, and home healthcare. 
 
 Future of Health Technology Award 2002
Gary L. Kreps, Ph.D.
Chief Health Communication and 
Informatics Research Branch
Behavioral Research Program
Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences 
National Cancer Institute
Gary L. Kreps (Ph.D. in Communication, 1979, University of Southern California) is Chief of the Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch of the National Cancer Institute's Behavioral Research Program, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences. In this position he plans, develops, and coordinates major new national research and outreach initiatives concerning risk communication, health promotion, behavior change, technology development, and information dissemination to promote cancer prevention and control. Dr. Kreps has published more than 20 books and 130 scholarly articles and chapters examining the important roles performed by communication in society. 
 MD Future of Health Technology Award 2002
Alice P Pentland, M.D.
James H. Sterner Professor and Chair
Department of Dermatology
University of Rochester
& Medical Director, Center for Future Health
Alice P. Pentland M.D. is the Medical Director of the Center for Future Health. She has twenty years of experience in scientific and clinical research in photobiology and skin cancer. Her research at the Center focuses on skin mapping and clinical applications in dermatology, and on the cellular and molecular aspects of the research effort on biomedical sensors. She received her M.D. degree and B.S. in biology in 1978 from the University of Michigan. She taught at Washington University School of Medicine until 1996 when she became the James H. Sterner Professor and Chair of Dermatology in the School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Rochester. She is also the Director of Telemedicine for the Strong Health System. Dr. Pentland spent a sabbatical at the MIT Media Laboratory in 1996. She has published extensively in scientific and clinical journals, and served as principal investigator on numerous NIH research grants, clinical trials, and as a member of various boards, including the Society for Investigative Dermatology.
 
Future of Health Technology Award 2001
Barry Robson, Ph.D.
Strategic Advisor/IBM Distinguished Engineer
Computational Biology Center
Exploratory Server Systems
IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
Barry Robson is an IBM executive and Strategic Advisor, Professorial Lecturer at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, NY, and CEO & Chair of the Dirac Foundation, a learned body promoting theoretical chemistry and biology in medicine and veterinary science at the Royal Veterinary college, U. London. According to an article in Nature (389,418-420,1997) he was a pioneer in bioinformatics, protein modeling, and computer-aided drug design. He was awarded a Ph.D. (University of Newcastle Upon Tyne) for experimental studies in protein folding in 1972, a D.Sc. (University of Manchester) for international recognition in computational chemistry and biochemistry in 1984, and Distinguished Engineer for contributions to bioinformatics by IBM in 1998.
MD Future of Health Technology Award 2001
Bruce Karlin, M.D.
Primary Care Physician
Worcester, Massachusetts
Vice Speaker, House of Delegates
Massachusetts Medical Society 

 
Future of Health Technology Award 2000
Professor Kevin Warwick
Cybernetics Department
University of Reading, UK
“Future Health Technology is perhaps the most exciting field of all in this century.  We will see the rise of electronic medicine as a challenger for the chemical near monopoly treatment that we see now.  We will also see the human nervous system and brain linked directly with technology, thereby creating a brave new world for us all.“
Professor Kevin Warwick
Future of Health Technology Award 2000
Albert Sunseri, Ph.D.
Executive Director, ASHE
American Hospital Association
“My contribution to health technology is making it work in everyday settings: to bring technology to the people and to prepare them for the future. With entering a new Millennium, Future of Health Technology Summit is a must for anyone interested in planning strategically for the future.”
Dr. Albert Sunseri
Future of Health Technology Award 2000
 
Future of Health Technology Award 1999
J. Michael Fitzmaurice, Ph.D.
Senior Science Advisor for Information
Technology
Immediate Office of the Administrator
Agency for Health Care Policy and Research
Dr. Michael Fitzmaurice is Senior Science Advisor for Information Technology, Immediate Office of the Administrator, Agency for Health Care Policy and Research. He joined the Public Health Service in 1987 as Director of the National Center for Health Services Research and Health Care Technology Assessment, coming from the Health Care Financing Administration where he was Acting Director, Office of Research. Previously, as branch chief in the Office of Research, he directed the development of Medicare's Prospective Payment System. 
Richard P. O’Brien, M.D., FACEP
Emergency Medicine Physician
Moses Taylor Hospital & Pennsylvania Chapter President
American College of Emergency Physicians
 
Future of Health Technology Award 1998
Michael McDonald, Dr.P.H.
CEO
Global Health Initiatives Inc.
Dr. Michael McDonald is a doctor of Public Health with specialization in health policy and administration from the University of California at Berkeley. He holds a dual specialty masters (MPH) in planning and policy and health education with a focus on communications and computing from the University of California at Berkeley. He completed an honors B.A. degree in an interdisciplinary study of medicine at the University of California, San Diego
Gloria Rudisch M.D., M.P.H.
Lecturer
Harvard Medical School
Director Child Health
Brookline Department of Health
Dr. Gloria Rudisch is Director of Child Health for the town and schools of Brookline, Mass., and Clinical Instructor in Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital of Boston. She received her M.D. from New York Medical School, trained at Bellevue, Boston City, and Children’s Hospitals. In addition to her medical degree, she also holds a Masters degree in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. Her work over the past twenty years has been in Child and Community health programs. Having sub-specialized in Developmental Pediatrics, she mentors doctors-in-training in these areas.
 
Future of Health Technology Award 1997
Professor Marvin Minsky
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Professor Marvin Minsky of MIT is one of the founders of the field of Artificial Intelligence, the 1990 Japan Prize Laureate, IEEE Fellow, and a distinguished breakthrough thinker and author. His creativity and innovation will serve as an inspiration to the conference participants during brain-storming sessions. Minsky’s research has led to both theoretical and practical advances in artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, neural networks, and the theory of Turing machines and recursive functions. Minsky designed and constructed some of the first mechanical hands, visual scanners, software, and computer interfaces.
 
 About the Future of Health Technology Awards
"If you understand something one way you do not understand it at all."
Professor Marvin Minsky
In 1956, a meeting of diverse group of scientists at Dartmouth consolidated a new field of science - Artificial Intelligence. The goal of that meeting was to discover the unknown and mysterious machinery of the mind. Future of Health Technology Institute considers this a model of leadership and innovation-skills that will surely be essential for dealing with the problems of the 21st century. 
Future of Health Technology Award and MD Future of Health Technology Award give recognition to break-through innovators and leaders who made significant impact on the future of health technology. The first recipient of the Future of Health Technology Award (1997) was Professor Marvin Minsky - the symbol of creativity and innovation and one of the founders of the field of Artificial Intelligence.  

The award (1997-2005) was in the form of a statue of Asklepios (Greek God of Healing and Medicine). According to myth, Asklepios was the son of Apollo and Coronis. The wise Centaur Cheiron instructed him in the art of healing and he developed such skill that he soon surpassed his teacher and became known as the founder of MEDICAL SCIENCE. When he used his knowledge to rise the dead Zeus killed him with a thunderbolt.  After the intervention of Apollo, Zeus relented and restored him to life, making him the God of Medicine and setting his image among the stars, holding his curative serpent staff.

From 2006 the award is in the form of a statue of Pegasus with crystal-diamond eyes. In Greek mythology, Pegasus is regarded as the horse of Muses, and has always been at the service of creative minds.  And so the story is told of a handsome youth who jumped on the back of a horse that unfolded the splendor of a mighty set of wings and soared towards the heavens… where he can still be seen as the star constellation, Pegasus.  Recipients of the Future of Health Technology Awards are the ones leading others with the inspiration to make the earth a better place for human race: reducing suffering and maximizing the potential for self-realization of the human kind. The award is presented at the annual Future of Health Technology Dinner during Future of Health Technology Summit™.


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