2024 CAP Outstanding Contribution to Pathology Informatics Standards Award

The College of American Pathologists (CAP) Outstanding Contribution to Pathology Informatics Standards Award, established this year, recognizes a CAP Fellow for outstanding service to informatics standards in pathology. The CAP presents this award when merited, not necessarily on an annual basis.

The College of American Pathologists presents Franklin R. Elevitch, MD, FCAP, with the CAP Outstanding Service Award in recognition of his dedication to pathology informatics and the Council on Informatics and Pathology Innovation.

Dr. Elevitch is the first recipient of the CAP Outstanding Contribution to Pathology Informatics Standards Award. Trained in anatomic and clinical pathology, Dr. Elevitch founded the electrophoresis company Analytical Chemists, Inc., before becoming director of the clinical laboratories at Mount. Zion Hospital Medical Center in San Francisco, where he also was the director of anatomic and clinical pathology. Dr. Elevitch served on the CAP’s Committee on Nomenclature and Classification of Disease, which developed the Systematized Nomenclature of Pathology (SNOP), a predecessor to the groundbreaking Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED).

As the first chair of the CAP Laboratory Information Systems Committee, later the Informatics Committee, he led the creation and presentation of most educational informatics content at CAP annual meetings from the mid-1980s to the ’90s. Dr. Elevitch trained a generation of informaticists, emphasizing business acumen, organizational efficiency, and appropriate technology use. He served on various CAP informatics committees, including SNOMED International Authority and the Diagnostic Intelligence and Health Information Technology Committee. He was the CAP liaison to the American Society for Testing and Materials’ international subcommittee for clinical data exchange standards for 23 years, the informatics secretariat for the World Association of Societies of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine for 11 years, and he liaised with Health Level Seven for 9 years.

As a SNOMED expert, Dr. Elevitch played a critical role transitioning SNOMED from the CAP to the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization. He chaired the final SNOMED Authority Committee that brought about a multi-year, multimillion dollar contract with an international conglomerate of countries, including Australia, Canada, Denmark, Lithuania, Sweden, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the US, to continue SNOMED development and support. SNOMED, a product of many pathologists over 40 years, and under Dr. Elevitch’s mindful care in the early 2000s, transitioned from a CAP-only, pathology-centric classification system into one that spans all of medicine and has, as of today, been adopted as the standard medical ontology in 48 countries.

After his retirement, Dr. Elevitch continued consulting via his firm, Health Care Engineering, while traveling internationally and living part-time on his coffee farm in Kona, Hawaii, with his wife, JoAnn. Dr. Elevitch passed away in May of 2024 at age 89 and is survived by his daughter, Jilll, and two grandsons, Zach and Charlie.

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