USF Health surgeon, innovator and inventor Stuart Hart, MD, won the 2013 Health Care Heroes Award for health care innovation, presented by the Tampa Bay Business Journal.
Dr. Stuart Hart
Dr. Hart is associate professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, assistant professor in the USF College of Engineering, director of the USF Health Center for the Advancement of Minimally-Invasive Pelvic Surgery (CAMPS), and medical director of the USF Health Tampa Bay Research and Innovation Center (TBRIC).
Dr. Hart won for his milestones for creative innovation, most recently his earning the Cade Museum Prize in 2012, for which he and his team successfully defeated 119 other technologies entered from across Florida. His winning project is a diagnostic device called eCath, a tiny electronic device is attached to catheter that incorporates acoustic signal processing technology to pick up signals from a patient’s body. In addition, Dr. Hart co-founded the Tampa Bay Research and Innovation Center in 2011 in downtown Tampa at USF Health’s Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation as a place where business, engineering and health care converge.
While Dr. Hart was named a winner, another USF faculty also made the Healthcare Heroes finalist list.
Dr. William Sappenfield
William M. Sappenfield, MD, MPH, professor of the Department of Community and Family Health at the USF College of Public Health and director of the Chiles Center, was a finalist in the Physician category for his work championing maternal and infant health issues with the March of Dimes, the Lawton and Rhea Chiles Center for Healthy Mothers and Babies, and the USF College of Public Health.
Both Dr. Hart and Dr. Sappenfield were honored with other winners and finalists at an awards dinner Oct. 17 at the Renaissance Vinoy Resort and Golf Club in St. Petersburg.