CAMDEN (AP) – Harvey Picker, a pioneering physicist, inventor and businessman who went on to a second career in higher education before focusing on the promotion of patient-centered health care, died Saturday at his home. He was 92.

Picker, son of the founder of Picker X-Ray Co., led the family business into such fields as cobalt therapy for cancer, nuclear imaging diagnostics and use of ultrasound for oceanography, which was then adapted for medical imaging.

Picker began his academic career by teaching political science at Colgate University, his alma mater. He then served for more than a decade as dean of the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs.

An avid sailor, Picker in 1982 moved to Maine, where he bought Wayfarer Marine, one of the largest boatyards on the East Coast. Four years later, he and his wife Jean founded the Boston-based Picker Institute, a global nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the principles of patient-centered care as seen “though the patient’s eyes.”

The institute, which is credited with having coined the phrase “patient-centered care,” also pioneered patient-satisfaction surveys that assessed the overall experience of hospital patients in an effort to improve the delivery of medical services.

Jean Picker, who served as an ambassador to the United Nations during the 1960s and was an active collaborator in her husband’s many interests, died in 1990.

Picker’s survivors include two daughters, Bobbi Hamill of Boston and Gale Jean Picker of Seattle, and three grandchildren. Services will be announced at a later date.