Seymour Friedberg

Seymour Friedberg was the first director of the Indiana University School of Medicine’s Medical Educational Resources Program. He transformed medical education in Indiana by building a groundbreaking statewide television network that connected the Indiana University Medical Center with 17 teaching hospitals throughout the state.

A New York City native, Friedberg was born on August 16, 1920, to Emanuel Joseph Friedberg and Minnie Berkowitz Friedberg. Friedberg attended grade and high schools in New Jersey, then attended Rutgers and New York Universities before enlisting in the Army. During World War II, from 1943 to 1945, he was a clinical lab technician for the US Typhus Commission at Abbassia Fever Hospital in Cairo, Egypt. After the war, he returned to New York University, where he completed his bachelor’s degree in biology in 1948, followed by study at George Washington University, where he earned a master’s degree in zoology in 1952.

Friedberg continued his education doing medical research at Duke University (1952–1955) and completed a PhD in Audio-Visual Communications at the Audio-Visual Center at Indiana University-Bloomington (1956–1964). In 1965, he was acting chief of the Communications Section for the Center for the Study of Medical Education at the University of Illinois.

Friedberg was appointed director and developer of the new educational resources program at the IU Medical Center in September 1966. The following year, the Indiana General Assembly enabled legislation to establish a telecommunications network that would decentralize medical education in Indiana, which was aimed at combatting the state’s shortage of physicians. One of Friedberg’s initial projects was the establishment of this television link between the medical center in Indianapolis and the university’s Bloomington campus—a component of the Indiana Plan’s envisioned statewide network, and one aimed at retaining IU School of Medicine graduates in the state. He set up the telecommunications system that transmitted information to practicing physicians throughout the state, as well as to interns and students enrolled in the statewide medical education program.

In 1968, a new project was initiated: the Medical Educational Resources Program (MERP). MERP provided television production of conferences, experiments, and lectures for medical students. Construction of a closed-circuit television network was started so that the medical students, interns, residents, and practicing physicians throughout the state could benefit from TV communications from the School of Medicine.

Friedberg developed a closed-circuit color medical television network, which served 17 teaching hospitals in Indiana. A medical videotape mailing network serving 34 Indiana hospitals also was established under Friedberg’s direction. In addition, he added a motion-picture facility and an instructional media section for medical educational materials. The facility provided materials to the IU School of Medicine for undergraduate education and to Indiana physicians for graduate and continuing education.

By 1969, the IU School of Medicine in Indianapolis credited the Indiana Plan, of which MERP was a part, with helping to eliminate the traditionally abrupt divisions between medical school, graduate medical education, and continuing medical education.

During his lifetime, Friedberg was vice president and a member of the board of trustees of Medical Television Broadcasters, past president of the Chicago and Central Indiana chapters of the Biological Photographic Association Inc., and a member of the University Film Association, the Audio-Visual Conference of Medical and Allied Sciences, and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. Locally, he served in many capacities, including being the institutional representative to EDUCOM (today known as EDUCAUSE) for Indiana University and IUPUI (now IU Indianapolis). Friedberg was a member of Sigma Xi, Phi Delta Kappa and Kappa Alpha Mu. He also worked in audiovisual sales and services.

On April 29, 1971, at age 50, Friedberg died suddenly at work in the Medical Science Building at the IU Medical Center.

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