Qpercom, a spin-out company of NUI Galway, has taken home two awards from the Irish Healthcare Awards 2019, hosted in Dublin recently.
Qpercom, founded by its Dutch CEO Dr Thomas Kropmans and Irish co-founder David Cunningham, was nominated for two awards for Best Use of IT and Excellence in Healthcare Management.
The Galway-based team won the Excellence in Healthcare Management category and also received An Duais Mhór, the overall outstanding project award.
Outstanding work in Irish healthcare
This award is a non-entry award, chosen by the judges as the ultimate award of the night representing outstanding work in Irish healthcare in 2019. Hosted by the Irish Medical Times, the Irish Healthcare Awards celebrates its 18th year as Ireland’s leading medical awards.
The awards recognise projects, individuals and organisations that excel in the Irish healthcare sector. 1The nominations are based on a research paper being submitted on behalf of NUI Galway and co-authored by eight collaborating universities, titled 'Cross-institutional OSCE Quality Assurance as part of an EU assessment strategy; are we equipped for it?'
Qpercom’s software solutions digitalised the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) and Multi-Mini Interviews (MMI). These assessments are used in healthcare education, recruitment and selection to assess competence of undergraduate and postgraduate clinicians.
'Value of advanced assessment'
Dr Thomas Kropmans, CEO of Qpercom and senior lecturer of medical informatics, NUI Galway, said: "Winning the overall award for me is an Irish acknowledgement of the value of advanced assessment with which we can assure quality in educational decision making for admission or selection interviews and clinical skills assessment.
"We are not there yet and this is a great encouragement to continue our research and push quality standards in assessment."
Qpercom spun out from the School of Medicine at NUI Galway in 2008.
Qpercom provides advanced assessment software solutions to universities globally, including the University of Dundee, Karolinska Institute and the National University of Singapore.