BUSINESSMicrosoft buys hospital system's "health intelligence software"The company decided that it could not pass up this opportunity to enter the health care application market.By Tyler Chin, amednews staff. Aug. 21, 2006. The crowded roster of health care information technology vendors added a new member July 26 when Microsoft Corp. announced it had agreed to acquire a clinical software product from MedStar Health, a seven-hospital health system based in Columbia, Md. The purchase marks a departure in strategy for the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant, which -- except for a short-lived venture five years ago -- has typically sold health care vendors operating systems and software tools to build their software applications. Microsoft is entering the health care application market because the health care sector presents a huge business opportunity, said Peter Neupert, corporate vice president of Health Solutions Group, a division Microsoft formed late last year. "It has not yet captured a lot of the operational benefits that other sectors of the economy like retail and manufacturing have by investing in IT," he said. "We think there is an opportunity [for us] to play in the application space in addition to being in the tools business for other application providers." Under the terms of the acquisition, Microsoft will pay an undisclosed sum to MedStar to acquire Azyxxi, which collects data from numerous disparate systems and stores those data in a clinical data repository, enabling physicians to access all the data available for a single patient at the point of care. The software application will be sold to hospitals and health systems, Neupert said. He added that it's too early to say whether Microsoft would adapt the application for private practice physicians. [...]Full text of American Medical News content is available to AMA members and paid subscribers.
Copyright 2006 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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