Press Releases

CIMIT Names 2012 Recipients of Young Clinician Research Awards

Eight Clinicians Win $50,000 to Fund Transformative Innovations in Healthcare Research

Date: 1/12/2012
CIMIT Contact: Steve Schachter, MD, CIMIT Chief Academic Officer
Email: sschacht@bidmc.harvard.edu

CIMIT is pleased to announce that eight promising medical professionals have been named recipients of the Young Clinician Research Award for 2012.

The 2012 Young Clinician Research Award Program encourages physicians, new to their research careers, to create transformative innovations in healthcare delivery workflows, enabled by novel, interoperable medical technologies. Applicants were nominated by Site Miners from the CIMIT consortium member hospitals.

AWARDEE	INSTITUTION	PROJECT TITLE
Khalid Hanafy, MD	Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center	Exploring near infrared spectroscopy for detection of delayed cerebral ischemia in subarachnoid hemorrhage patients
Daniel R. Seichepine, PhD	Boston Medical Center	Development of preliminary clinical diagnostic criteria for chronic traumatic encephalopathy
Arielle Stanford, MD	Brigham and Women's Hospital	Staged treatment development for avolition
William Meehan, MD	Children's Hospital Boston	Transcranial light emitting diode therapy for the treatment of chronic concussive brain injury
Brian Edlow, MD	Massachusetts General Hospital	Advanced MRI neural network analysis for predicting recovery of consciousness after traumatic coma
Lee Park, MD	Newton-Wellesley Hospital	Analyzing hospital readmissions to design interventions
Leslie Morse, DO	Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital (Partners Affiliate)	Cardiac atrophy and exercise-induced cardiac remodeling in chronic SCI
Naren Gupta, MBBS, PhD	VA Boston Healthcare System	An integrated clinical system to reduce stroke risk in patients with carotid disease

“With this award we want to encourage young clinicians to explore new ways of using technology to improve healthcare, especially to patients impacted by devastating neurological and psychological traumas and disease,” said CIMIT CEO John Parrish, MD. “Their innovative research brings new techniques and technologies to make a significant difference in the lives of millions of patients worldwide including our country's wounded warriors.”

The selection panel was seeking “rising stars” in the CIMIT clinical research community working on innovations within and across care environments as part of CIMIT's NeuroHealth and Integrated Clinical Environments’ (ICE) initiative. Awards were given to researchers at each of the eight clinically-focused health care consortium institutions: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital Boston, Massachusetts General Hospital, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and the VA Boston Healthcare System.

Those eligible included clinical researchers early in their careers, such as Fellows, Instructors and Assistant Professors. A key criterion was the clinician’s desire to solve complex healthcare problems.

Other criteria for selection included fitting in with the CIMIT mission; the potential impact of the clinician’s work on patient care; the collaborative nature of the planned work; the innovativeness of the research; the academic excellence of the candidate; and the potential of the candidate to become a “rising star” with a future as a clinical leader in the field.

Site miners at the institutions who helped identify promising candidates are the following: BIDMC, Leo E. Otterbein, PhD; BU/BMC, George O’Connor, MD; BWH, Kirby Vosburgh, PhD and Frederick Schoen, MD, PhD; CHB, Martha Murray, MD and Frank Pigula, MD; MGH, Rajiv Gupta, MD, PhD; NWH, Keith Isaacson, MD; SRH, Ross Zafonte, DO; and VA BHS, Brian Hoffman, MD.

About CIMIT

CIMIT is the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology. A non-profit consortium of Boston-area teaching hospitals and engineering schools, CIMIT provides innovators with resources to explore develop and implement novel technological solutions for today’s most urgent healthcare problems.

Members of the consortium are Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Medical Center, Boston University, Brigham and Women's Hospital, The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Children's Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Northeastern University, Partners HealthCare, and VA Boston Healthcare System.