Name: Rui Gomes Title: Chief Information Officer Place of work: São Sebastião Hospital Location: Santa Maria da Feira, Portugal Tools of the trade: Visual Studio 2008 Inspiration: “More than money, the will to help people makes the difference.”

One of medicine’s most exciting new frontiers isn’t found in operating rooms or research labs, but in hospitals’ IT departments, where small bands of developers are coming up with innovative solutions to healthcare’s information-processing needs. Rui Gomes and his team have made their hospital a frontier to follow in Portugal.

From its establishment in 1999, the founders of São Sebastião Hospital wanted to implement a unified technology platform to serve the needs of patients and healthcare professionals throughout the hospital, rather than depend on isolated systems located in each department. To do this, CIO Rui Gomes and his small but dedicated staff built an integrated electronic patient record (EPR) application, centralizing all patient information regardless of the source. The result, Medtrix EPR, was so successful that it was soon adopted throughout the hospital.

Always at the cutting edge, Medtrix was developed first as a Web-based application using Visual Studio .NET 2003. Now, Rui and team are taking it further, using the power of Visual Studio 2008 and the Windows Presentation Foundation to build a hybrid interface that greatly improves design, usability and interactivity.

Today, hospital personnel roam the halls of the 317-bed facility using Tablet PCs, affording them an immediate and holistic view of each patient’s clinical information. “Doctors don’t have time to manage anything,” says Rui. “They are putting out fires. The IT department has the opportunity to plan, organize and manage.”

Rui is especially proud that, rather than purchase an expensive system, his team built Medtrix from the ground up, reflecting the values of the public hospital he supports: “An early manager showed me that if you have the will and are honestly motivated to help people, it’s possible to make a big difference without a lot of money.”