December 16, 2005

CIMIT team receives innovation award

The Center for the Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT) awarded its Edward M. Kennedy Award for Health Care Innovation to the CIMIT-Russia team for creating an avian flu surveillance program. The award is given annually by CIMIT in recognition of an outstanding team whose work in the previous year embodies the CIMIT mission of innovative collaboration.

Michael V. Callahan, MD, of the MGH Infectious Disease Unit and leader of the Biodefense Program at CIMIT, was co-leader of the project. "Dr. Callahan's team, along with scientists at the Vector Viral Research Institute in Siberia, detected avian flu in Siberian wildfowl, thereby sounding the alarm that added to worldwide measures for control," says Jeffrey A. Gelfand, MD, director of CIMIT International.

Since its inception, CIMIT has been bringing together clinicians from challenging environments and who desire to improve patient care with technologists who have the expertise to design novel devices. "Because of CIMIT, we have been rapidly accelerating investigator ideas to address complex patient care problems," says John A. Parrish, MD, chief of MGH Dermatology and director of CIMIT, (shown above) with Gelfand, (center), and the CIMIT-Russia team.