BOULDER, Colo.—The Computerworld Honors Program has recognized medical information software company MIQS as a 2009 Laureate and Finalist and a winner of the top honor, the 21st Century Achievement Award.
This is the second time MIQS has been honored. In 1998, MIQS was recognized with a Computerworld Smithsonian Finalist Award.
"We are humbled to have been recognized twice with Computerworld Honors,” said Dr. James McGroddy, MIQS Chairman. “And we are very pleased to have been recognized with the top award this year. It is a testament to our talented team members and the support of our clients that we have been able to succeed in applying technology to improve the lives of others.”
Previous winners include Medtronic, Apple Computer, Federal Express, General Electric, Amazon.com, StanfordMedicalSchool, MIT and the National Cancer institute.
Victor E. Pollak, MD, who co-founded the company in 1990 with electronic medical record software developer John P. Flynn, accepted the awards during the 21st Annual Laureate Medal Ceremony & Gala Awards Evening at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C.
The 40-year-old Computerworld is an information technology news source, with a Web site and print publication. For more than two decades, Computerworld Honors has acknowledged those individuals and organizations that have used information technology to benefit society.
MIQS said it focuses its expertise on chronic disease where information technology can make the greatest impact both medically and financially. Pollak, who is a chronic disease expert, said that these patients need continuous lifetime medical care from many caregivers in many places, and all caregivers need to access the patients’ entire records.
MIQS’ Sybase ASE-driven Disease Manager Plus software suite manages both clinical and business processes in caring for patients with chronic diseases such as kidney disease, diabetes, dialysis and transplantation.
Its software is used by 5,500 medical personnel in nearly 200 care locations in the United States and internationally. It allows caregivers to maintain complete, digitally coded, analyzable lifetime patient medical histories, immediately available anytime anywhere. It displays clinical data trends to show the connection between treatments and outcomes at the point-of-care and enables continuous improvement with built-in analysis and decision support.
In two peer-reviewed publications, MIQS showed the ability of a correctly modeled EMR to improve health outcomes in chronic disease in a meaningful way. In one nine-year study representing 4,000 patient years, the use of Disease Manager Plus decreased mortality by almost 40 percent when used by physicians to help manage chronic kidney disease patients treated by dialysis—and with 25 percent fewer staff than the average U.S. dialysis unit.
“We not only need to employ the power of modern IT in healthcare, we need to use it in the right EMR model to reap the benefits of technology to improve the health of our citizens, especially if we want to address chronic disease adequately,” said George F. Rovegno, CEO of MIQS.
