Cesar Augusto Caceres, MD, peacefully passed away Feb. 9, 2020, at his home in Washington, D.C.
Born April 9, 1927, in Puerto Cortés, Honduras, Dr. Caceres was the only child of Julian R. Caceres, former Ambassador to the United States from Honduras, and Mrs. Mariana C. Caceres. His partner of 48 years, W. Raymond Mize, Jr., MD, pre-deceased Dr. Caceres in September 2004, as did his companion Stanley J. Kuliczkowski in July 2015. Dr. Caceres is survived by his cousins Mrs. Gloria Caceres, Dr. J. Desiree Pineda, Mrs. Carmen Alfaro Morawski and Mrs. Ana Maria Alfaro.
In 1953, Dr. Caceres obtained his medical degrees from Georgetown University. He obtained additional training in internal medicine at Tufts and Boston Universities in Boston, Massachusetts. He received cardiology and research training from George Washington University.
Dr. Caceres worked for the Public Health Service where he won two Superior Service Awards for developing the country’s first functional computer-electrocardiographic interpretive system. Later he joined George Washington University where he was professor of clinical engineering. Dr. Caceres has edited and co-authored nine textbooks dealing with various aspects of technology, medicine, and health care.
In 1970, Dr. Caceres opened his private practice in Dupont Circle integrating computer technology into the day-to-day real world of medical practice. Beginning in the 1980s Dr. Caceres developed for use in his practice The System Integrated Record, S.I.R. By the early 1980s, like other physicians in D.C., Dr. Caceres began seeing patients with HIV and was committed to the care of patients with the goal of improving health and quality of life until his retirement in 2014. In October 1985, in an op-ed article on HIV in the Wall Street Journal and a letter to the editor in the Journal of the American Medical, Dr. Caceres pointed out that the methodology used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to report the causes of HIV transmission understated the national figures of those who had become infected as a result of recreational drug use. As a result of these publications, the CDC changed its methodology for HIV reporting. In his practice, Dr. Caceres authored many unique patient education pieces on HIV, opportunistic infections, and safer sex to better educate his patients.
Dr. Caceres founded the Institute for Technology in Health Care, a non-profit which seeks to support projects designed to identify, investigate, and apply new and existing technologies to the solution of health care problems. Services will be held at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, 1725 Rhode Island Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C., on Saturday, Feb. 29, 2020, at 10:30 a.m. Memorial contributions may be made to the Institute for Technology in Health Care, 1759 Q St., N.W., Washington, D.C., 20009.
