Quinnipiac Professor Earns Prestigious Award

HAMDEN, CT – Rachida F. Parks, of Madison, associate professor of computer information systems in the School of Business at Quinnipiac University, has been named the 2020 recipient of the American Medical Informatics Association’s Diana Forsythe Award, which was presented virtually at the AMIA’s annual symposium, Nov. 14-18.

The award honors either a peer-reviewed AMIA paper published in the Proceedings of the Annual Symposium or peer-reviewed article published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association or other journals publishing medical informatics-related content that best exemplifies the spirit and scholarship of Forsythe’s work at the intersection of informatics and social sciences.

Parks and her co-authors had their award-winning paper, “Electronic Health Records Implementation in Morocco: Challenges of Silo Efforts and Recommendations for Improvements,” published in the International Journal of Medical Informatics.

“I am delighted and honored to share this recognition by the American Medical Informatics Association,” Parks said. “I want to recognize all of my collaborators, both Americans and Moroccans, on this paper as well as 27 other medical doctors and IT professionals in the Moroccan health care system. I am dedicating this award to my dear friend and mentor, Dr. Rolf Wigand, who recently passed. My dear friend’s gift of knowledge continues to shine.”

Parks said she received a School of Business grant to complete her research.

“Research opportunities allow us to share our insights and skills with our students in the classroom,” Parks said. “They demonstrate the versatility of computer information systems to students regardless of what industries or countries they end up working in.”

Parks, who joined the Quinnipiac faculty in 2016, has a doctorate in information sciences and technology from Pennsylvania State University.