MIS thesis on EMR receives 2025 ASCEND Excellence Award

This year’s ASCEND Excellence Award for College Thesis Project was awarded to fourth year BS Management Information Systems students, Nicole Therese L. Arcenas, Cuitlauzina Brianna Cerbito, Leopoldo A De Castro III, Darrel Ethan C Ong, Kamille Claire Y Tiu, and Michelle Simone T Yu, for their research entitled, “The Acquisition and Implementation of an Electronic Medical Record System with Process Re-Engineering for the Health and Nutrition Unit of DepEd Schools Division Office, Sto Tomas City”.

The faculty adviser is Ms Sandra Francesca A Lovenia and the partner community is the Department of Education – Health and Nutrition Unit, Sto Tomas City Schools Division Office.

Their group was recognized for pioneering digital transformation in school health services. The award was presented during the Ateneo Service Learning Conference (ASLC) and Ateneo Socio-Civic Engagement For National Development (ASCEND) “Beyond the Common Good, Strive for the Common Good” held on 13 June 2025 at Escaler Hall.

The capstone project by BS MIS students marked the first collaboration between DepEd and DOH, and the first-ever EMR implementation in DepEd CALABARZON. In response to inefficiencies in managing over 36,000 paper-based health records, the team partnered with the Schools Division Office Sto Tomas City and the Department of Health to deploy iClinicSys. Backed by gap analysis, process reengineering, and comprehensive training, the system now enables accurate digital health records, faster reporting, and streamlined workflows. This school-based EMR initiative not only improved operational efficiency and care delivery—it also offered a scalable model for digital transformation in public education health systems nationwide.

Congratulations to the Awardees!

Watch a short video about their project:

The University recognizes students whose work makes a significant impact through the Ateneo Socio-Civic Engagement for National Development (ASCEND). This year, ASCEND honored senior high school, undergraduate, and graduate students based at the Loyola campus and the Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health, whose projects and research outputs demonstrated subject mastery and the capacity for synthetic thinking while meaningfully engaging communities beyond Ateneo in contributing to national development.

The ASCEND Excellence Award is given to outstanding individuals and groups of students whose project or research work demonstrates, in an extraordinary manner, all three of the following:

1. Extraordinary mastery of subject matter and application of synthetic thinking.
2. Deep and extensive engagement with partner communities and/or institutions.
3. Addresses a national development concern in a strongly strategic and/or creative manner with very significant short-term impact on target beneficiaries and/or the potential for significant longer-term impact in promoting the well-being of the greatest number.

You may access the Book of Abstracts here: https://go.ateneo.edu/2025ASLCASCENDBookofAbstracts

Photo courtesy of the 2025 ASCEND Official Photos and DepEd Sto. Tomas EMR System Implementation group