Univ. of California Health System’s Atul Butte to Receive AMIA’s Collen Award

Aug. 21, 2024

AMIA notes that health system’s chief data scientist is a longtime leader in using all types of data to drive better decision making and science

David Raths

Atul Butte, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Data Scientist for the University of California Health System, also serves as the inaugural Director of the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute at the University of California, San Francisco.

Atul Butte, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Data Scientist for the University of California Health System, will be given the American College of Medical Informatics’ Morris F. Collen Award of Excellence at the AMIA 2024 Fall Symposium in San Francisco in November.

The award is given annually in honor of Morris F. Collen, a thought leader in the field of medical informatics. It is presented to an individual whose personal commitment and dedication to medical informatics has made a lasting impression on the field.

Butte serves as the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Distinguished Professor and inaugural Director of the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute at the University of California, San Francisco.

Butte previously won AMIA’s William W. Stead Award for Thought Leadership in Informatics.

AMIA noted that Butte is a longtime leader in using all types of data to drive better decision making and science. He embraced his UC Health role using data across the six health systems in the state of California to create something profoundly impactful. During the pandemic, this data helped inform decisions not just at the University of California, but across the state and the country.

“His work combining the data sets across the linked, yet independent, medical centers has been nothing short of visionary and transformative as UC drives operational improvements across all pharmacies, care sites, five National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer centers, and more,” AMIA said.

"ACMI is honored to recognize Dr. Butte’s career, which has been defined by unwavering dedication, super-human execution, and a strong commitment to improving patient care through the work of biomedical informatics," said ACMI President Kevin B. Johnson, M.D., M.S., David L. Cohen University Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Computer and Information Science, Pediatrics, and Science Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, in a statement. "Atul begins with the passionate belief that data improves our understanding of health and the delivery of health care. He works tirelessly to access data and share its relevance to patient and population concerns. An intentional big thinker, he has been a friend, mentor, and inspiration to thousands -- including me.”