November 15, 2010 13:29 ET

Cielo MedSolutions Awarded $1.3M Phase II STTR Grant From the National Cancer Institute

Cielo Obtains Best Possible Score in Award to Develop and Prototype Next-Generation Clinical Quality Management System

ANN ARBOR, MI--(Marketwire - November 15, 2010) - Cielo MedSolutions LLC, a provider of healthcare software and web applications, today announced that the National Cancer Institute (NCI), an institute of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded the company a $1.3 million Phase II Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant. In a teaming arrangement with the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) Department of Family Medicine, Cielo will apply the grant funding to develop and prototype a next-generation clinical quality management solution based upon the company's flagship product, Cielo Clinic™.

Cielo received a perfect score on the grant proposal (10 out of a possible 10) which can be viewed as a testament to how well this technology resonates with care providers.

"In Phase I, we successfully studied and documented the needs and expectations of primary care practices and providers regarding web-based information technology for disease management and quality improvement," noted Donald E. Nease, Jr., MD, associate professor of family medicine at the University of Michigan Health System and Cielo's chief medical officer. "We collected a wealth of data and designed a 'next-generation' system. In this Phase II Work, we will develop and test a prototype of such a system in real practice settings."

"Having the ability to work directly with practices and providers to design the system they want was invaluable," observed Chris King, Cielo's senior vice president of product and operations. "Our findings confirmed the need for a fresh and innovative approach to clinical technology in primary care medicine. In this Phase II, we will be building and prototyping the system that practices and providers said they wanted: a lightweight, web-delivered solution designed for all care-delivery participants that tracks and manages activities and outcomes at all stages including screening, prevention, diagnosis and treatment. The system will also simultaneously support the requirements of Meaningful Use, patient-centered medical homes and pay-for-performance programs in an integrated manner."

Dr. Nease also noted, "The episode-of-care data model used in building this system will be clinically-focused (as opposed to billing-focused) and this alone will allow us to create innovative features not seen in other systems, the features we continually heard providers wanted."

With this award, Cielo also qualified for up to $125,000 in commercialization funding from the Michigan Emerging Technologies Fund managed by the Michigan Small Business and Technology Development Center.

The project described was supported by Award Number R41CA128117 from the National Cancer Institute. The content is solely the responsibility of the issuing entities and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Cancer Institute or the National Institutes of Health.

About Cielo MedSolutions
Cielo MedSolutions is a provider of healthcare software and web applications. The company's web-based Cielo Clinic™ software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering is a clinical quality management system that combines an all-problem & all-patient registry, clinical decision support, e-prescribing, care management, population management and performance reporting to help ambulatory care providers proactively provide continuous and comprehensive care support initiatives such as patient-centered medical homes, pay-for-performance programs, clinical integration and quality improvement. www.cielomedsolutions.com.

About the University of Michigan Health System
The University of Michigan Health System includes three hospitals, six specialty centers, and more than 50 health centers and 120 outpatient clinics, along with the U-M Medical School and its Faculty Group Practice, the U-M School of Nursing and the Michigan Health Corp. The U-M Hospitals, Medical School and School of Nursing consistently rank among the best in the nation. For more information, visit www.med.umich.edu/.