The Association for Pathology Informatics presented its annual Lifetime Achievement Award to Walter Henricks III, MD at the 2016 Pathology Informatics Summit in Pittsburgh, PA. The presenter was Dr. Michael Riben, 2016 API President.
Dr. Riben hails from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and currently practices cytopathology at the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is also the Medical Director for Laboratory Information Services in their Department of Pathology, Division of Pathology/Lab Medicine. He maintains strong interests in Digital Pathology, Semantics Technologies, Terminological management, laboratory information systems and electronic medical records.
Dr. Walter H. Henricks earned his medical degree and completed his residency training at the University of Michigan. Since 1997, Dr. Henricks has been the Medical Director of the Center for Pathology Informatics at Cleveland Clinic where his group is responsible for the administrative and technical aspects of pathology informatics and laboratory information management for the institution. He also serves as the vice chair of the Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Institute and as the laboratory director for the main campus laboratories at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. His clinical practice activities include surgical pathology with a subspecialty interest in gastrointestinal pathology and protein electrophoresis/immunofixation interpretation in clinical pathology. He is board-certified in anatomic and clinical pathology.
Dr. Henricks is a founding member and Past President of the Association for Pathology Informatics (2004). He has led multiple leadership activities and held multiple positions in the College of American Pathologists in areas of pathology informatics and laboratory accreditation. He is frequently invited to be a speaker on pathology informatics topics. Henricks' interests include evaluation and effective implementation of technology for laboratory information management, management of pathology/laboratory data in electronic medical records systems, laboratory operations, and laboratory accreditation.
Dr. Henricks has been dedicated to the development of pathology informatics since the early 2000s. In a 2015 article, Dr. Henricks astutely recognized that pathologists are uniquely positioned to act as stewards for laboratory information in electronic health records and throughout health care organizations (1). This deep appreciation of how pathologists stand at the nexus of medical data management and patient care drove Dr. Henricks‘ efforts to continue building upon education, training, and technological initiatives towards better enabling pathologists to uphold their obligations to the field.
Dr. Henricks was instrumental in bringing API and CAP together to establish the PIER curriculum resource for pathology program directors and faculty seeking to meet the ACGME requirements for training in pathology informatics. He is widely respected in the field of pathology and pathology informatics for his in-depth, reasoned guidance and leadership across multiple disciplines and organizations. We are grateful for his contributions and ongoing participation and, thus, honor Dr. Walter Henricks with API‘s 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award.
1. Pathologists as Stewards of Laboratory Medicine, Walter H. Henricks, MD; Myra L. Wilkerson, MD; William J. Castellani, MD; Mark S. Whitsitt, PhD; John H. Sinard, MD, PhD, Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine 139(3): 332-337, March 2015. DOI: 10.5858/arpa.2013-0714-SO https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273440921_Pathologists_as_Stewards_of_Laboratory_Information
