The Information Week 500

Today, Beth Israel Deaconess issued this press release, noting that BIDMC Information Systems has been named the No. 1 technology innovator in the United States for 2012.    The incredible people of BIDMC IT earned this recognition.   They are an amazing, hard working, and dedicated group.


BOSTON – Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has been named the No. 1 technology innovator in the United States in this year’s InformationWeek 500 – a list of the top technology innovators in the US.

The annual list was released Tuesday at an awards ceremony at the exclusive InformationWeek 500 Conference at the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort, Dana Point, CA.

“Beth Israel Deaconess has gotten into the habit of being No. 1,” says Rob Preston, VP and editor in chief of InformationWeek. “It was the first medical center to go live with iPads for clinical use, the first with a Web-based medical record system, the first to attest to ‘Meaningful Use’ via the national HIT stimulus program.

“Now it’s leading the way with Clinical Query, its clinical research business intelligence system. All of that innovative thinking and doing – and the outcomes those efforts are producing – has earned the hospital one more top slot: No. 1 on our annual InformationWeek 500 ranking of business technology innovators.”

Clinical Query enables investigators to ask questions, preliminary to research, that will help them understand the potential statistical power of a clinical trial or the availability of data for clinical research.
It was built by loading 2.2 million patients (1997 to the present) and 200 million data elements into a repository, then creating a web-based query tool capable of navigating 20,000 medical concepts to ask questions such as “how many people have a certain disease and what treatments did they receive?”
“The remarkable IT professionals, caregivers and administrators of BIDMC have worked together for more than 30 years to create a culture of technology innovation,” says John Halamka, MD, BIDMC’s chief information officer. “Boston is a kind of medical mecca and I can think of no better place than BIDMC to serve as a healthcare IT learning lab for the country. All of us are honored to be named No. 1 for 2012 on the Information Week 500.”

Now in its 24th year, the InformationWeek 500 recognizes business technology teams that have made a notable improvement to how their companies operate. To be considered, companies complete a rigorous application on their business technology strategies. The ranking process is quantitative and qualitative, with applicants earning points based a questionnaire and based on the achievements they outline in an essay submission. Applications are evaluated by a panel of InformationWeek editors. The survey data is aggregated across all InformationWeek 500 companies and by industry; individual responses are kept confidential and individual company data is never disclosed without permission.
Past overall winners include PACCAR Inc., The Vanguard Group, CME Group, National Semiconductor, Con-Way, and Principal Financial Group. The InformationWeek 500 rankings are unique among corporate rankings as it spotlights the power of innovation in information technology, rather than simply identifying the biggest IT spenders.

Additional details on the InformationWeek 500 can be found at www.informationweek.com/iw500/ 

About InformationWeek Business Technology Network (http://www.informationweek.com)
The InformationWeek Business Technology Network provides IT executives with unique analysis and tools that parallel their work flow—from defining and framing objectives through to the evaluation and recommendation of solutions. Anchored by InformationWeek, the multimedia powerhouse that looks across the enterprise, the network scales across the most critical technology categories with online properties such as DarkReading.com (security), NetworkComputing.com (networking and communications) and BYTE (consumer technology). The network also provides focused content for key IT targets, such as CIOs, developers and SMBs, via InformationWeek Global CIO, Dr. Dobb's and InformationWeek SMB, as well as vital vertical industries with InformationWeek Financial Services, Government and Healthcare sites. Content is at the nucleus of our information distribution strategy – IT professionals turn to our experts and communities to stay informed, get advice and research technologies to make strategic business decisions.

About Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School, and currently ranks third in National Institutes of Health funding among independent hospitals nationwide. BIDMC is clinically affiliated with the Joslin Diabetes Center and is a research partner of Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. BIDMC is the official hospital of the Boston Red Sox. For more information, visit www.bidmc.org.