Sysmex New Zealand is delighted to congratulate Colin Cao on winning the Sysmex Prize for Innovation in Health Informatics 2012, for his essay on an application for managing patient information during maternity care.

This is the second year Sysmex New Zealand has sponsored the competition for health informatics students at the University of Auckland. The students completed an innovation assignment which included a business case on the topic: “How can we better use mobile devices in a healthcare environment?” “The entries were judged by a team at Sysmex based on innovation, feasibility, and use of technology.

Sysmex’s Product Planning Manager for the Sysmex Global IT R& D Team, Nikos Constantopoulos who was involved in judging the competition, said that the company was impressed with the range and quality of entries, which addressed innovations across an interesting range of healthcare scenarios.

“We selected Colin’s assignment as the winning entry as it considered an area of health where there is an opportunity for improved care by utilising existing technology in a feasible manner”. Maternity care under an LMC, is predominantly paper-based with patients often carrying paper records of maternity care observations and measurements with them to their LMC visits. With potentially long timespans between LMC visits, the idea of sending out relevant information in a timely manner is a simple but clever way of ensuring that patients get all the information they may need, to make decisions throughout pregnancy. “A simple and original innovation, which ties into the idea of working together to advance healthcare, which Sysmex believe is the way forward”.

Colin Cao was presented with his prize of $1000 at the HINZ (Health Informatics New Zealand) Conference Dinner, which was held in Rotorua this week.

Colin is a third year Bachelor of Health Science student and plans to continue his studies undertaking post grad papers in health informatics next year. When asked why he decided to focus on an innovation for maternity care, Colin explained that his paper was inspired by a family member’s maternity care experience. Colin was extremely pleased to be the recipient of this year’s award and enjoyed attending the HINZ conference and exhibition as well – an interesting break after completing third year exams. Colin thanked Sysmex for the opportunity to attend the conference, “attending HINZ was a real highlight for me and a great insight in to the range of opportunities in health informatics and health IT. Next year I plan to engage in post-graduate studies, and look forward to attending the HINZ conference again – it was a real inspiration”.

Sysmex’s sponsorship of Health Informatics at the Auckland University is an on-going initiative and the company is pleased to be involved in encouraging excellence in health education by helping to foster innovation.