The Healthcare IT Blog

iSoftStone Signs Agreement With Microsoft to Develop Citizen Health Solutions in China Using HealthVault

Roberto_Ruggeri — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 15:39:16 GMT

Just today we announced the expansion of HealthVault in China, specifically in the Jiangsu province of Wuxi. This is definitely a big step in the international expansion of HealthVault outside of the United States and joins the other international deployments in Canada (doc), Germany and the UK.

Microsoft Corp. and iSoftStone Information Technology (Group) Co. Ltd. have signed an agreement that enables iSoftStone to introduce Microsoft HealthVault technology to the Chinese market. HealthVault, a personal health application platform, enables individuals to store and manage their health information in a personal, online account. Initially focused on Wuxi, in the province of Jiangsu, the vision of the Microsoft-iSoftStone relationship is to enable citizens to connect to various health systems and services run by government organizations, physicians, hospitals, pharmacies and even fitness facilities for a comprehensive view of their personal health information. iSoftStone will be the exclusive operator of HealthVault in Wuxi and will develop and offer the HealthVault-based services to developers, application providers and device manufacturers to provide citizens with tools that will help foster dynamic, trusted and personalized healthcare.

Check the rest of the press release online.

iSoftStone Signs Agreement With Microsoft to Develop Citizen Health Solutions in China Using HealthVault: Digital health innovation center is first step of a joint healthcare effort in Wuxi, China.

Microsoft Acquires Sentillion

Roberto_Ruggeri — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:27:08 GMT

Well, this is at least a partial excuse for my absence from this blog :-)

Today we announce the acquisition of Sentillion, Inc demonstrating again Microsoft’s level of commitment to the healthcare industry.

Many of you reading this are familiar with Sentillion and this acquisition is the culmination of years of successful partnership between the two companies. Our primary goal with the acquisition is to make it easier for healthcare professionals to deliver better patient care by streamlining access to multiple IT applications and patient data by combining Amalga UIS and Sentillion’s solutions for single-sing-on and context management.

So far we have received excellent feedback and I am really excited about the Sentillion folks joining the ranks of the Health Solutions Group and Microsoft.

For more detail please have a look at the press release.

Join us for the Connected Health Conference

Roberto_Ruggeri — Fri, 01 May 2009 06:04:15 GMT

The HealthVault Solution Conference that we did last year has evolved into a broader event that includes more of the solutions that Microsoft has to offer in Health.

The Connected Health Conference will be held on June 10-12 in Bellevue, WA and we’re going to feature a lot of content both around Amalga UIS and HealthVault and an exceptional lineup of speakers including David Kibbe, Governor Michael Leavitt, Uwe Reinhardt, Mark Smith and Peter Neupert. Lastly we’re going to have a few surprises in store both for HealthVault and Amalga UIS, so make sure you rush and register, we have limited space available and we expect a lot of people!

Gartner Group’s Take on Health Intelligence and Amalga UIS

Roberto_Ruggeri — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:46:38 GMT

Recently we worked with Gartner Group on a webcast outlining the issues that healthcare provider organizations face when it comes to data integration and how solutions such as Amalga UIS 2009 can help address these issues and provide organizations with more tools and better ability to view, analyze and act upon information that they already own, but rendered inaccessible by the silos in which it’s locked.

The twenty minute long webcast features: GG’s Dr. Tom Handler and Vi Shaffer, two of our customers Brad Kappalman and Dr. Mark Smith (Medstar WHC) and Kim Pemble (WHIE), Jon Handler and Peter Neupert.

The webcast is available at this address. Enjoy!

HIMSS 2009 – WOW!

Roberto_Ruggeri — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 03:00:10 GMT

Ok, I have been to a few HIMSS with Microsoft now, but I must say that this one, by all means exceeded my expectations.

We had two days of in-depth training with our field before the show and that was great. All the content was spot on (at least from my perspective :-), we had a great representation from across the company and an awesome session with two of our current customers.

The show was the busiest for Microsoft in all the 8 years I have been at HIMSS. I was there most of the time and I literally did not have the time to shut up for more than 2 minutes. I talked to our current customers about the new release for the product, prospect customer about the value of Amalga UIS and how that can be used to help address their problems and potential partners about what opportunities exist for them on Amalga UIS. All the demos rocked and the booth design was absolutely great.

The great thing was the response we got from the people there. Many heard about the product before or were referred by a friend or person they knew. It is amazing to see the difference one year makes in awareness. I must thank of course our customer for being great advocates and showing new and innovative uses for the product.

This is all happening before and while we announce two major pieces of news:

New York Presbyterian Hospital is the first Amalga UIS customer to connect Amalga UIS and HealthVault to provide their customers with online access and control over their health records with the mynyp portal. This leverages a feature of Amalga UIS that allows direct connection to HealthVault.
A new version of Amalga UIS is released to the market. This is the second major release of the product after the acquisition from Medstar in 2006. The product is also renamed from Amalga to Amalga Unified Intelligence System or Amalga UIS. This is to distinguish from our Amalga HIS product. The name Amalga stays and it’s meant to address the entire family of enterprise products: Amalga UIS and Amalga HIS

As part of the announcement we also announced three modules for Amalga UIS:

Each module has its unique value proposition, but each one of them leverages the ability for Amalga UIS to aggregate data in real time from multiple systems and present that in an amalgamated (pun intended :-) fashion. I will go into more detail for the modules in a future post.

We also released a new, improved version of the web site with more information and details about the product, in particular:

Industry reports from KLAS and IDC
New whitepapers on the business goals of Amalga UIS and closed loop medication management
New videos

Other health groups at Microsoft have also been very busy and we released a new version of the Connected Health Framework – Architecture and Design Blueprint. Kudos to Teddy, Ilia and all the people that have contributed to this new version!

I look forward to share more of the exciting things we’re working on with you. Stay tuned!

Microsoft at HIMSS 2009 – It Starts…

Roberto_Ruggeri — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 23:59:01 GMT

We just issued a press release outlining some of the cool things that you’ll see at HIMSS 2009 from Microsoft.

At HiMSS09, the annual conference and exhibition for the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), Microsoft Corp. will showcase in its booth (No. 1232) new solutions designed specifically for healthcare providers, caregivers and patients, as well as partner and customer success stories

Specifically:

Microsoft Amalga, the Unified Intelligence System
Microsoft HealthVault
Microsoft Surface
The Microsoft Connected Health Platform including Solution Accelerators such as the IHE XDS.b Reference Implementation which now also support the Async Option
Several partner solutions showcasing cool use of Microsoft technologies

Microsoft will also be present at the Interoperability Showcase thanks to the work that Teddy is driving.

Also check http://www.mshimss2009.com/ for more detailed info.

Media Alert: Microsoft Showcases New Health Solutions to Enhance Patient Experience and Improve Operations at HiMSS09.

Headed for HIMSS 2009

Roberto_Ruggeri — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:41:59 GMT

Like the past 8, this year I will be at 2009 HIMSS Healthcare IT Conference and Exhibition. I will be there starting tomorrow (Friday 4/3) for internal Microsoft training. As you can imagine this is a good opportunity to get all the Microsoft people in healthcare together.

MS-HUG is on Saturday with a lot of great content. In particular if you are interested in learning more about how our customers are using Amalga UIS, make sure not to miss the session “Dealing with Tough Knowledge Management Issues with Amalga” by Ted Corbett, Seattle Children’s Hospital at 9:15am.

The show floor opens on Sunday at 2pm and I will be hanging around the Microsoft pavilion most of the time. You can find us at booth 1232 (easy to remember :-)

I will be for sure in the booth on Sunday afternoon, Monday morning, Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning. Yeah, I know, it’s a lot :-)

Keep an eye on the press pass site to catch all the exciting news we will be sharing with you soon. I will try and post something here over the next week.

Stop by if you can and say hi! See you there!

Virtua Health Joins the Growing Amalga Family

Roberto_Ruggeri — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 23:43:04 GMT

Today we announced Virtua Health as our 12th Amalga, the Unified Intelligence System (UIS) customer.

Virtua Health is a pioneer in healthcare quality and many other areas. We are jazzed to have them part of our client base and look forward a number of ways in which we can together “Improve Health Around the World”.

Implementation at Virtua is underway and soon we should be able to start talking about some of the benefits and accomplishments.

We see Amalga UIS playing a key role in Lean and Systems Engineering initiatives at all of the hospitals and organizations where we’re running. The fundamental principle here is that by providing the appropriate tools to the frontline users, organization will be able to reduce the feedback loop cycles helping them understand where process can be improved and naturally gravitate towards a more efficient way of providing care, improving organizational performance, reducing inefficiencies and so on.

With Virtua’s experience in this are we hope to make our product and solutions even more suited to this purpose.

Read the full press releases to get the entire story.

This brings the number of announced Amalga customers to twelve:

Medstar (July 2006)

New York Presbyterian Hospital (March 2007)

Johns Hopkins (April 2007)

Wisconsin Health Information Exchange (August 2007)

Novant (August 2007)

Moffitt (September 2007)

St. Joseph Health System (November 2007)

DC RHIO (June 2008)

El Camino (September 2008)

University of Washington (September 2008)

Seattle’s Children Hospital (September 2008)

Virtua Health (March 2009)

Peter Neupert on Modernizing Healthcare Through IT

Roberto_Ruggeri — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 04:38:25 GMT

Peter Neupert, Corporate Vice President of the Microsoft Health Solutions Group and my grand-grand-boss, recently completed a testimony before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP).

Peter testified along with:

Jack Cochran, Executive Director, The Permanente Federation, Oakland, CA
Janet Corrigan, President, The National Quality Forum, Washington, DC
Valerie Melvin, Director of Information Technology, The Government Accounting Office, Washington, DC
Mary Grealy, President, Health Leadership Council, Washington, DC

The full testimony can be seen on the HELP committee's web site. The transcript is available on the Microsoft PressPass web site.

On the same page you can see Peter’s written submission. This document is particularly interesting as it really summarizes what the Health Solutions Group (HSG) is all about. I strongly suggest you read it and let me know if you have any feedback either directly or though the comments below.

You can read Peter’s impressions on his blog.

Lastly, a quick video from FOX News that was recorded right after the testimony. Enjoy!

WSJ Health Blog : How Microsoft Plans to Make Money in Health Care

Roberto_Ruggeri — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 03:42:56 GMT

There is a recent post on the WSJ Health Blog with Steve, my grand-boss (my boss’ boss, can I say that?), as the guest of honor, shedding some light on the overall Microsoft and HSG plans in Healthcare.

Have a look at the video or click on the link for the full article:

Health Blog : How Microsoft Plans to Make Money in Health Care