April 9th, 2008
Microsoft delivers first commercial version of healthcare-info system
Amalga, the product formerly known as Azyxxi (wow, try saying that ten times fast), is finally out as a commercial product.
On April 9, Microsoft announced that its healthcare-information-system product — which has been used for more than 10 years by MedStar Health System, the organization from which Microsoft bought Azyxxi a couple years ago — is now available broadly to other customers.
Customers for this product, a company spokesman reiterated, are “large health organizations - any variety of hospital, health system - with existing health information systems.” Amalga is meant to integrate with existing health-record software and systems and to help the disparate patient information sources integrate with one another.
For now, there is no direct connection between Amalga and HealthVault, Microsoft’s patient-information software/service combo, a beta of which Microsoft fielded last October. That said, it sounds like something is in the works. From the aformentioned Microsoft spokesman:
“There is an Amalga-HealthVault patient portal pilot underway where information from Amalga can be pulled into a patient’s HealthVault record. Microsoft recognizes that healthcare is a complex problem that will require solutions both within complex internal hospital systems (Amalga) and within the complex external healthcare ecosystem (HealthVault) and the need to integrate the two. Stay tuned for future developments on that front.”
Healthcare is one of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s top investment areas, in terms of his three-plus year plan for diversifying Microsoft’s revenue base.
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