Ceremony to award Alejandro Jadad an honorary doctorate

Alejandro Jadad will be awarded an honorary doctorate by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya on Thursday 25 January 2018.

Colombian-Canadian physician, scientist, educator, entrepreneur, writer and philosopher, he is considered a world authority in innovation that allows people, individually or in groups, to achieve full, healthy and happy lives, in love until their last breath.

Jadad qualified as a doctor from Colombia's Xavierian University and has a DPhil from Balliol College, University of Oxford. He is now a professor and director of the Institute for Global Health Equity and Innovation, and founder of the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation at the University of Toronto, Canada.

He has been called "the human internet", having visited more than 100 countries to search for and connect the best minds, organizations, tools and available knowledge to re-imagine and re-invent the way in which we humans live, learn, work, have fun, love and sustain ourselves in the 21st century.

A world renowned expert in information and communication technologies applied to health, he is also recognized for the development of the most widely used tool to evaluate the quality of controlled clinical trials, known as the Jadad Scale, and for leading a global conversation that generated a new conceptualization of health as the ability to adapt to the physical, mental and social challenges that life presents. This has led to the creation of a pandemic of health, letting everyone in the world and in any context, including patients with complex problems, feel healthy.

He has received the Premier’s Research Excellence Award from Ontario’s Ministry of Energy, Science and Technology (1998) and the Top 40 Under 40 Award (1999), and held the Rose Family Chair in Supportive Care at the University of Toronto (2000–2010) and the Canada Research Chair in eHealth Innovation at the University of Toronto and the University Health Network (2001–2015). He has also received the New Pioneers Award in Science and Technology (2001 and 2002), the  American Academy of Pain Medicine Award (2002), the Canadian-Latin American Achievement Award (for being the person who made the greatest contribution to the relations between Canada and the sub-continent, 2004), as one of the Best of the Best for his Top 40 Under 40 peers (2005) and the Distinguished Lecturer Award from the Federal Ministry of Health of Canada (2006). He has been appointed as the first Hispanic member of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (2007), named as one of the 10 most influential Hispanic Canadians in the country (2007), and awarded Colombia’s Order of the Congress (2008). He has also received the Félix Restrepo Medal for his contributions to Science and Society (2009) and for his contributions to Learning and Education (2012) from Colombia’s Xavierian University, among other accolades. In 2012, he was honoured as the first recipient of the Pioneers for Change Award, which recognizes Canadians born abroad who have made extraordinary contributions to the country and the world.

UOC president, Josep A. Planell; Director of the Faculty of Health Sciences, Pilar Garcia Lorda; and Development Director of the UOC's eHealth Center, Manuel Armayones, will take part in the ceremony.