Robert Dickinson, an independent consultant and globe-trotting healthcare technology management (HTM) leader, has been selected to receive this year’s AAMI Foundation & ACCE’s Robert L. Morris Humanitarian Award. This award—honoring the late Robert Morris, a longtime AAMI member, co-founder of the American College of Clinical Engineering, and humanitarian—recognizes an individual or organization that has applied healthcare technology to improving global human conditions.

“Rob has made over 60 humanitarian journeys to the developing world in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, supporting, training, advising, and motivating individuals to contribute to healthcare technology management in their environment. He is very deserving of the 2018 Robert L. Morris Humanitarian Award,” said Tobey Clark, director of the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center for Health Technology Management at The University of Vermont.

“This award literally means the world to him,” said Dickinson’s wife Cindy. “Receiving it is a validation of his life’s work. It has also been a gift to us as a family, as we’ve been spending many hours with him trawling through his photographs and talking about the incredible experiences he’s had throughout the world during more than 30 years in his career as a biomedical engineer.”
Dickinson, who was born in Zimbabwe but now lives in South Africa, has provided training on HTM, anesthesia, and critical care systems in more than two dozen countries, working with organizations such as the WHO, International Federation of Medical and Biological Engineering, Engineering World Health, Orbis Flying Eye Hospital, Operation Smile, and Gradian Health System.

“What a privilege to have served those suffering from physical birth defects. Many feel so alone, lost, and hopeless, rejected and outcast by society and, in some places, even by those way closer to their family units,” Dickinson posted on Facebook alongside an Operation Smile video. “What a privilege to have, on three continents, worked with the finest of the finest teams of healthcare and allied professionals imaginable. Each and every team different, yet every mission team always becomes bonded family in an incredibly short time.”

Dickinson also has worked with local and international universities to teach and support their biomedical engineering and HTM students, international medical equipment companies to provide training and technical support for their products, and multilateral organizations and NGOs to undertake healthcare technology–related assignments within low-resource countries.

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