After a residency at Los Angeles County General Hospital, Collen joined surgeon Sidney Garfield as original founding physicians in the Permanente Medical Group sponsored by the prominent industrialist Henry J.

[9] During World War 2 they cared for shipyards employees with clinical and preventive large-scale industrial healthcare using indexed information records and management systems which enabled these essential workers to deliver a virtually uninterrupted flow of the over 1,500 “Liberty Ships.”[10] For more information on Morris F. Collen's life see: Engineering Computerized Multiphasic Health Screening - A 2005 Interview with Morris F. Collen.

With data gathered from the practice, Collen organized and built a unique database for research in methods of preventive care, initially focusing on chronic diseases.

[10][12] This was a precursor for computer-based informatics models that strongly influenced the development of hospital information systems, and contributed to the shift, nationally and internationally, from a purely clinical focus to one that spanned biomedical research to public health care, including preventive medicine.

[6] In 1989, he helped found the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)[7] by bringing together several former disparate professional organizations, including ACMI.