Pen Computer Systems Managing Director, John Johnston, and the Clinical Audit Tool™ (CAT) were announced as winners of The Don Walker Award, in the "Efficiency Category" for 2009. The award was announced by the President of HISA Dr Michael Legg at the HIC '09 Gala Dinner held in the Great Ballroom of Parliament House on 20th August 2009.
In accepting the Award on behalf of the PCS Clinical Audit Tool, John Johnston was clearly at a loss for words as he thanked the President and its outgoing CEO Dr Brendan Lovelock. He was still stunned as he returned to his Gala Dinner table to join PCS staff and guests who were jubilant.
Dr Don Walker, after whom the awards are named, is a pioneer in the application of computers in Australian health care. With an untiring commitment to the field that has spanned decades, Don has made a major contribution to Australian health informatics, particularly in the area of terminology.
As part of the criteria for a Don Walker Award a recipient "will have made a demonstrable impact on the improvement of health outcomes through innovations in health informatics" A foundation member of the Health informatics Society of Australia, John sees this Award as the most significant acknowledgement of Pen Computer Systems achievements in 17 years of operations.
John Johnston described the award as "a great acknowledgement of our very dedicated health informatics team at PCS and is also recognition of some of the inspiration flowing from the company's association with Aboriginal Australia through its primary health information systems that focus on proactive patient recall."
PCS Clinical Audit Tool (CAT) is an adjunct to clinical desktop systems that delivers an easy to use chronic disease prevention and management perspective, and population health techniques to general practice, while assisting GPs and practice staff a capacity to improve the quality and completeness of their practice data.
"This will become increasingly important as we move forward with the implementation of Individual Electronic Health Records (IEHR) that will need to accurately reflect patient health information substantially created and stored in primary care clinical systems" stated Mr Johnston The meteoric success of CAT in general practice has been substantially assisted by implementation support from the Divisions of General Practice and its subsequent adoption by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners as part of its eHealth strategy to improve quality in healthcare. The RACGP sets the accreditation standards for general practice in Australia.
John Johnston, and PCS warmly congratulate Graeme Grieve of Kestral, and Karen Dearne of the Australian who also were presented with Don Walker Awards on the night. Graeme has done sentinel work on the world stage to assist standards harmonisation and Karen has been a tireless investigative journalist in eHealth for many years.