The Medical Society of the District of Columbia (MSDC) Health Physicians Foundation has announced the recipient of the 2026 Dr. Cesar A. Caceres Medical Innovation Award and the award of a $250,000 grant to Mary’s Center, a community health center serving more than 65,000 people of all ages, incomes, and backgrounds in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.
Mary’s Center will use this award to implement remote patient monitoring technology that allows patients facing barriers to care to securely share health information with their health care team from home. This infrastructure can support patients managing chronic medical, behavioral health, or maternal health needs, depending on local priorities. They are focused on building scalable systems that integrate with electronic medical records and enhance care coordination between visits.
Mary’s Center is a one-stop medical facility for patients dealing with complex health and social challenges that often cannot be fully addressed with regular in-person visits. We are incorporating telemedicine and home visits to serve our communities. New technology allows us to move towards more continuous and proactive support. Benefits include earlier identification of risk, more informed clinical decision-making, and more personalized care, while reducing barriers that disproportionately impact underserved communities.
“To fully support our patients, care cannot remain confined to the doctor’s office,” said Nancy Bunn, CEO of Mary’s Center. “Investing in remote patient monitoring will allow us to respond more quickly and support families in real-time for a more proactive and equitable model of community care.”
By enabling care teams to monitor health trends in real-time, Mary’s Center can identify concerns early, proactively intervene, and support patients before problems escalate. This approach enhances continuity of care, deepens patient engagement, and helps reduce preventable complications. This investment will support the development of infrastructure that will enable Mary’s Center to provide higher quality, community-based care beyond the walls of the clinic.
“Mary’s Center is a worthy recipient of this award,” said Clint Peebles, President of the Health Physicians Foundation. “This grant will help grow a sustainable, scalable model that improves measurable health outcomes, strengthens patient engagement, and provides higher quality, community-based care.”
The award was presented March 25 at MSDC’s 2026 Healthcare Honors Dinner and is supported by a grant from the Healthcare Technology Institute in Washington, DC. The institute focuses on the use of technology to benefit and inspire others in the healthcare field.
The Foundation’s award is in memory of Dr. Cesar A. Cáceres, a respected medical expert dedicated to identifying and applying technology to solve medical problems. He founded the Healthcare Technology Institute, worked for the Department of Public Health, and received two Distinguished Service Awards for many accomplishments, including the development of the nation’s first functional computer electrocardiogram interpretation system.
For more information about MSDC and the Dr. Cesar A. Caceres Award, please visit www.msdc.org. For more information about the Healthcare Technology Institute, please visit www.ithcawards.org.
