MCI graduates’ start-up wins nationwide innovation award with "PriorizR”

The Austrian Ministries of Economics and Innovation awarded the "PriorizR" for its needs-based prioritization of patients on waiting lists with the healthcare management innovation prize.

The PriorizR is a software-based waiting list management tool developed by the start-up famado. The start-up was founded by three MCI alumni and offers a new and flexible solution for waiting list management with a focus on the efficient and demand-oriented prioritization of patients.

The incorporated company was registered in June 2021 by Fabian Kreiseder, Dominik Molnar and Markus Themessl. "We have noticed that the health and social care sector is constantly faced with major challenges when it comes to managing waiting lists. Which patients should be treated first? How can we minimize patient suffering and pressure on staff? How can we reduce costs and use our resources efficiently and equitably? It turns out that waiting lists are often managed with outdated systems that are prone to errors, require considerable staff resources and are therefore unnecessarily expensive”, says Themessl, describing the idea behind the company's launch. The team identified this market niche during the "Applied Project" course that formed part of the Bachelor in Business Administration Online at the MCI.

The PriorizR builds on the systematic assessment of specific patient characteristics of an entire waiting list (scoring), enabling the comparability of their treatment needs. This way, patients can be prioritized on the waiting list according to their level of need. The degree of prioritization can be adjusted via algorithm (ranking). In the final step, the waiting list management tool assigns appropriate and available treatment options to patients (matching). All clinical decisions remain with local staff. The possible use cases of the software include all areas in which waiting lists arise. For example, the PriorizR has been in use at the "Institut für Sozialdienste" (ifs) in Vorarlberg since November 2020, supporting the prioritization and referral of more than 1,000 psychotherapy patients per year across the entire state.

At last year’s MCI Creativity Award, the team had already convinced the jury of its potential. In a nationwide innovation prize organized by the Austrian Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs and the Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology, they convinced again. As part of a call for submissions on innovation-enhancing public procurement (Innovationsfördernde Öffentliche Beschaffung, IÖB), new solutions were submitted in the three areas of "Innovations for health management", "Innovations for health" and "Innovations for nursing and care". From a total of 80 submissions, a jury of experts selected the six top innovations they believed had the greatest potential to provide sustainable support to the health and care sector. The PriorizR was announced as the winner of the "Innovations for healthcare management" category.