Medical alumni return for reunion, set to honor three notable alumni
Upstate Medical University’s Alan and Marlene Norton College of Medicine will welcome more than 200 alumni back to campus for its 2023 Medical Reunion Oct. 13 and 14
Alumni from the classes of 1958, 1963, 1968, 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003, 2008 and 2013 will participate in tours, seminars, luncheons and class dinners, as well as hear reports from Upstate President Mantosh Dewan, MD, and Norton College of Medicine Dean Lawrence Chin, MD.
“Upstate’s Medical Reunion is about celebrating and reconnecting with alumni,” said Paul Norcross, executive director of the Medical Alumni Foundation. “The return to campus for many alumni is an opportunity to rekindle memories of days gone by, and make new memories with former classmates.”
“It’s also an opportunity to thank our alumni for their ongoing support throughout the year for the college and its students,” Norcross said.
This is the second reunion for medical alumni since the college received its new name. In December 2021, the college received a naming gift from Alan Norton, MD, Class of 1966, and his wife, Marlene. Their estate gift will help to retain and develop outstanding faculty and teaching to benefit students.
One of the highlights of the activities is the awarding of nearly $800,000 in scholarships to more than 150 students. In addition, alumni philanthropy supports students with white coats, textbooks, reference guides and the Career Advisory Network
A feature of the reunion is the presentation of three alumni honors: The Distinguished Alumnus Award, the Outstanding Young Alumnus Award and the Humanitarian Award.
James H. Philip, ME(E), MD, Class of 1973, will receive the Distinguished Alumnus Award.
James Philip, ME(E), MD ’73, is an anesthesiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Cornell University. After graduation from Cornell, he served as a research and development engineer at Hewlett Packard Medical, which later became Philips Medical. It was as an engineer that Philip became interested in product development to solve the needs of physicians. He decided to attend medical school to identify those needs and create products to make a positive impact in healthcare.
He found success in almost everything he touched. He created the Gas Man, a computer simulation, textbook, and learning environment that teaches students, clinicians, and researchers the kinetics, clinical use and economics of inhaled anesthetics.
Philip also developed the science of high-flow fluid infusion using a device he created that produces constant pressure to drive liquid infusion into veins. Equipment using this constant pressure infusion principle has become the standard of care for fluid resuscitation worldwide.
Another major innovation of his was the measurement technique called hydraulic resistance, which assesses the quality of intravenous infusion by varying flow rate and measuring the resulting pressure change. Importantly, this technology detects when infusions infiltrate from veins into tissues, saving patients discomfort and harm. The culmination of that work is the IVAC Alaris Carefusion Signature Edition Infusion Pump.
In the area of monitoring and safety, Philip and colleagues developed the first commercially successful clinical CO2 monitor, LifeWatch by Perkin Elmer. LifeWatch added continuous carbon dioxide monitoring to the Perkin Elmer mass spectrometer that previously provided intermittent measurement of gases in some operating rooms.
Throughout his career, Philip has collaborated with his wife and anesthesia colleague, Beverly Philip, MD ’73, whom he met during his first year of medical school.
Robert Swan, MD, Class of 2008, will receive the Young Alumnus Award
Robert Swan, MD ’08, is an associate professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences at Upstate. He is the only ophthalmologist specializing in ocular inflammation in Central New York. In addition to his clinical practice, Swan is director of Upstate’s Ophthalmology Residency program and serves as the Ophthalmology Department Quality Officer and EPIC Champion. As director of the residency program, he has focused on creating an environment and experience that makes residents the best physicians and people they can be, through mentorship and improvements at a systems level. Among numerous initiatives, Swan introduced the use of a smartphone app to place the “institutional memory” of the department at a resident’s fingertips, including orientation materials, equipment guides and procedures.
By focusing on the electronic health record (EHR), Swan helped found the EPIC ophthalmology specialty steering board, a group of 12 ophthalmologists from 12 institutions nationwide that meets with EPIC on a monthly basis. His efforts have streamlined documentation and reduced the “click burden” for the department by almost 50 percent over the last eight years.
In 2018, he was awarded both Downtown Provider of the Year and Program Director of the Year by Upstate and received the President’s Education Award in 2023. Swan met his wife, Becca Lenhard Swan, MD ’08, a breast radiologist at Upstate, while both were medical students.
Edward “Ted” Higgins, Jr., MD, Class of 1978, will receive the Humanitarian Award
Edward “Ted” Higgins, Jr., MD ’78, is a vascular surgeon who has dedicated his life to providing top-tier surgical care to patients around the world, principally in Haiti through the Higgins Brothers Surgicenter for Hope, which he established in Fonds Parisien, Haiti, in 2016.
A graduate of St. Lawrence University, Higgins attended medical school at Upstate, completed a general surgery residency at Yale New Haven Medical Center, followed by a vascular surgical fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine. It was during Higgins’ fourth year of surgical residency that he and his wife, Kim, first experienced Haiti during a rotation he did at a Haitian hospital. Higgins would return his focus to Haiti, but not before he made annual trips to the Dominican Republic to provide healthcare to sugar cane cutters and their families. Seeing surgical needs of all kinds, he began operating in a borrowed clinic in 1992, training Dominican surgeons to perform both laparoscopic abdominal procedures as well as vascular access procedures for patients with end-stage renal disease. Following a catastrophic earthquake in 2010, Higgins returned to Haiti with mission teams to help with surgical cases in the region. Over the next six years, he performed more than 500 surgeries, over time recognizing the need for more surgical operating space and trained local surgeons to handle the demand.
In 2016, the Higgins Brothers Surgicenter for Hope was opened with a goal of providing surgical access in an area of Haiti with no surgical options and to help train surgical residents from the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince. With construction funded by Higgins, the facility is named in honor of Higgins’ father, Edward Higgins, MD, who was an Upstate ENT resident from 1946 to 1950, and his uncle, Paul Higgins, MD, a general surgeon, who practiced together for 38 years in Cortland, N.Y. Within three years, the Surgicenter employed an all-Haitian staff of 25, including two general surgeons, two OBGYN surgeons, two anesthesiologists, two emergency room doctors, and four nurse midwives, performing an average of 600 operations and delivering more than 500 babies annually. Despite political upheaval, lack of a functioning government, and widespread gang violence, the Surgicenter continues its operations today.
Two special lectures also will be featured during Medical Reunion.
Welton M. Gersony, MD, Class of ’58, will present “The Evolution of the Diagnosis and Treatment for Congenital Heart Disease: An Extraordinary Journey” as part of the Welton M. Gersony, MD, Class of 1958 Pediatric Lectureship Oct. 13 at 8 a.m. in the Medical Alumni Auditorium in Weiskotten Hall. Gersony is the Alexander S. Nadas Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. He served as director of Pediatric Cardiology at the combined Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital/Weill Medical College of Cornell program.
Robert B. Cady, MD, Class of ’71, will deliver the Weiskotten Lecture on the Haitian Clubfoot Program, its development and its struggle to survive Oct. 13 at 3 p.m. in Medical Alumni Auditorium. Cady is an emeritus professor of orthopedics and pediatrics at Upstate.
Both lectures are open to the public.
Caption: Award winners at Medical Reunion Weekend are, from left, Edward "Ted Higgins, Jr., MD; James H. Philip, ME(E), MD; and Robert Swan, MD.