The award was presented to Professor Lipsky at the seventh International Symposium on the Diabetic Foot, which was held at The Hague, The Netherlands on May 22, 2015. Described as the ‘Oscars’ of the diabetic foot world, the award is only handed out every four years to ‘honour a clinician and/or scientist for highly outstanding contributions to the understanding, prevention, and treatment of diabetic foot disease, and for their patient advocacy’.
Professor Lipsky is currently on the FDUK committee as the lead for microbiology and he has also been an established member of The Diabetic Foot Journal editorial committee for many years. Professor Lipsky’s research in this field has been instrumental and he has published more than 220 peer-reviewed papers and more than 100 other medical papers and textbook chapters, as well as two books on infectious diseases. He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the Royal College of Physicians (London), is currently teaching associate at Green Templeton College and affiliated with the University of Oxford Division of Medical Sciences, visiting professor of medicine at the University of Geneva and professor of medicine emeritus at the University of Washington.
In Seattle, he was an active clinician, served as an infectious diseases and internal medicine consultant, chair of infection control, hospital epidemiologist, director of the Primary Care Clinic and a member of the Investigational Review Board. He directed an Antibiotic and Wound Infection Research Clinic that conducted over 60 randomised clinical trials.
Professor Lipsky has also been the chair of the guideline committees on diabetic foot infections of both the Infectious Diseases Society of American and the International Working Group on the Diabetic Foot, since their inception. He is currently collaborating on various research projects worldwide, is working with a clinical research programme on osteoarticular infections he helped set up at the Hospital of the University of Geneva, and is consulting with biopharmaceutical organisations. The Karel Bakker Foot Award reflects all of these achievements.
