Giving back: Fellowship benefits BME health care students

The story behind John Holton's career is, literally, history. After earning a BA in history from UW-Madison in 1972, Holton pursued a master's degree here in industrial engineering. "I love studying history and felt very lucky to have had four years to pursue that full time," he explains. "However, when I graduated, we were in an economic down-turn and history didn't sound like it would provide me with a means of income if I continued on in graduate school. I thought about what job areas would be important to the future, and managing hospitals and health-care facilities was the most appealing."

Interviewing for graduate schools, Holton met Professor David Gustafson, who had just begun studying health systems engineering. The area interested Holton, and a research fellowship enabled him to pursue the degree. "I was very lucky to have been a part of David's research projects and watch him build his program," he says. "It provided an education in how to be an entrepreneur. David was very innovative, moved quickly, wasn't afraid to make mistakes and worked very hard. He demanded that his employees work hard and work smart."

Holton took his entrepreneurial spirit to California, where he worked four years at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley to learn how health care was delivered. Then he launched his own company, the Atwork Corporation. At its peak, Atwork provided resource management systems (scheduling and materials management) to two out of three hospitals in the United States and Canada and hospitals in 16 other countries.

The Medaphis Corporation since has acquired Atwork and, with other subsidiaries, created Per-Sé Technologies. With his new company, scheduling.com, Holton hopes to extend scheduling services to all health-care providers and connect them with consumers via the Internet.

Recently Holton established the John P. Holton Wisconsin Distinguished Graduate Fellowship for Biomedical Engineering. "I believe a college education is one of the most important things you can accomplish in life," he says. "Because of my own fellowship, I knew how critical they could be to providing someone who will later make a contribution to health care to continue their education."