Epic Systems CEO Judy Faulkner will be honored this fall with a prestigious Distinguished Alumni Award from her alma mater, the University of Wisconsin, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.
It’s one of three Distinguished Alumni Awards the Wisconsin Alumni Association will hand out.
John Daniels Jr., chairman emeritus of the Quarles & Brady law firm, and Doris Feldman Weisberg, a 1958 UW graduate a co-founder of the Food Network and professor emerita at City College of the City University of New York, will also receive Distinguished Alumni Awards.
Faulkner heads a $2 billion company and has been on the Forbes billionaire list for several consecutive years. She has signed the giving pledge, which will leave her wealth to a charitable foundation she established.
She founded Epic Systems in 1979, at a time when most healthcare systems kept patient records tucked away in manila folders.
[See also: Epic reveals R&D spending outstrips Apple, Google and its competitors.]
Faulkner coded the first Epic software herself. Today, she’s listed as one of the few healthcare billionaires on the Forbes billionaire's list, along with Neal Patterson, who heads rival health IT company Cerner.
She believes her company is better off as a private entity, and she plans to keep it that way.
Faulkner earned her undergraduate degree in math from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania and her master’s in computer science at University of Wisconsin - Madison.
She recently told Healthcare IT News research and development is her sweet spot because she has a technical background. It was at UW-Madison she wrote the code, using the computer language MUMPS.
Twitter: @Bernie_HITN