Presentation of the 2007 Morris F. Collen Award to William W. Stead, MD, including comments from recipient

The American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) is an honorary society established to recognize those who have made sustained contributions to the field. Its highest award, for lifetime achievement and contributions to the discipline of medical informatics, is the Morris F. Collen Award. Dr. Collen's own efforts as a pioneer in the field stand out as the embodiment of creativity, intellectual rigor, perseverance, and personal integrity.The Collen Award is given each year, when appropriate, to pioneers in the field of Medical Informatics who best exemplify the teaching and practice of Morris Collen. In 2007, the College was proud to present the Collen Award to William Wallace Stead (Figure 1). Throughout his career, Dr. Bill Stead, has been able to visualize better ways of achieving the purpose of work, and then to drop to ground level to figure out how to execute on the next step in that direction.Figure 1 William Wallace Stead 2005.Bill Stead was born in Durham NC in 1948 as third child to Eugene Anson Stead, Jr. and Evelyn Emogene Selby. Gene Stead was Chair of Medicine at Duke. He trained a generation of independent thinkers and constantly broke the mold; changing the Duke curriculum to replace memory with research, using the Cardiovascular Databank to improve practice, and launching the physician assistant profession to increase access to care. Evelyn was at Gene's side every step; raising Nancy, Lucy, and Bill, co-authoring an early low fat cook book, and editing the journals Gene took on. Every person or event she touched became special.To many observers through the years, it seemed that Gene and Bill Stead were practically the same person. As Harry Jacobson, MD, Vice-Chancellor, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, observed, “They had both a loving relationship, but a mutual respect—and a mutual curiosity, intellectual curiosity about what …