The European Association of Healthcare IT Managers and the European Association of Hospital Managers encouraged all IT managers, healthcare organizations, hospitals, and individuals worldwide to participate in the competitive IT@NETWORKING AWARDS held January 18-19 2012 at the General Secretariat of the EAHM in Brussels, Belgium.
Ian de Vega from the Medical Research Council in South Africa took home the IT@2012 Trophy and the $2,500 euro cash prize. In addition, the winning project is going to be featured in a number of Europe’s leading healthcare management publications.
The winning solution, “Successful Development and Implementation of a Primary Healthcare Information System” (PHCIS) is being implemented at all primary healthcare facilities in the Western Cape Province. Since the start of the project in 2006, PHCIS has been implemented in 103 facilities and has created electronic records for 3.75 million patients. PHCIS processes 130,000 patient visits a month and tracks 5.6 million folders. The system supports patient registration, appointment scheduling, clinical record keeping, reporting, and workload monitoring
Challenges since using PHCIS have overcome the shortage of funding, initial resistance and lack of buy-in, absence of adequate network infrastructure and connectivity, insufficient space for computers and printers, unstable electricity supply, and the need to create positions for information officers and data capturers.
Second place was awarded to the entry “Individualized Patient Disease Diagnosis and Treatment through Whole Genome Sequencing and Comparison” which was presented by Peter van de Spek. In this project, an Oracle Exadata server was installed as the initial component for the Erasmus Medical Center Translational Research Center’s personal cloud architecture.
The project’s objective is to provide scientists easy access to Next Generation Sequencing data, to provide access to the results of experiments performed at the Erasmus Medical Center, and to develop a Benelux reference to reference genomes with 3-4 million variations per individual genome.
Third place went to “eyeSmart EMR-Intelligent IT Solution for Eyecare” presented by Anthony Vipin Das. eyeSmart is an Ophthalmic Electronic Medical Record and Hospital Management System developed in house by L. V Prasad Eye Institute in India.
eyeSmart enables clinical data entry, generates instant medical reports, and provides information on prescriptions, refractions, and surgical records. The EMR provides complete patient records which are handed out to patients at every visit. So far the system is in place in seven centers ranging from tertiary, secondary, to primary centers which are now running totally paperless.
For more information, email HITM General Secretariat at awards@hitm.eu or call +32/2/286 8501 or go to www.itandnetworking.org.
