Eclipsys and Microsoft Partners to Offer Complementary Strengths to Healthcare Enterprises

Eclipsys Corp. and Microsoft (News - Alert) Corp. have entered into a partnership relation to offer flexibility to hospitals for improving care quality and health information technologies efficiencies.

 

Both the companies, breaking with the tradition of closed, proprietary systems, will provide the market tightly integrated health IT solutions that will help physicians, nurses and hospital administrators to gain insights from data aggregated from multiple clinical and financial systems across the hospital. In addition, the solutions will also support clinicians in acting upon a more complete health record.

 

“Eclipsys (News - Alert) and Microsoft offer complementary strengths to healthcare enterprises looking to overcome the restraints caused by legacy health IT applications that block the strategic exchange and use of digital health data,” Peter Neupert, corporate vice president, Microsoft Health Solutions Group, said. “Blending Eclipsys’ leadership in physician adoption and sophisticated clinical and decision-support workflows with Microsoft’s leadership in interoperability, data extraction, authentication and context management will open up new choices and opportunities for healthcare organizations needing to make the most from their existing IT infrastructure.”

 

According to the agreement, the companies plan to integrate key components of Eclipsys’ industry-leading Sunrise Enterprise suite of integrated software applications with Microsoft Amalga Unified Intelligence System, a data aggregation platform that integrates vast amounts of clinical, administrative and financial data from disparate information systems.

 

The integration will help to enhance the analytic capabilities Eclipsys can provide to its clients, making it easier for healthcare organization to connect disparate data repositories, opening up a whole new paradigm of data analysis and clinical and financial uses.

 

“Clinicians have been frustrated by not having critical information available to them at the point of care because either the information resided on disparate systems or they were unaware that patient data was available,” Philip M. Pead, Eclipsys’ president and CEO, said. “The new federal regulations surrounding the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and achieving ‘meaningful use’ are a tipping point that will drive a rapid amount of change in how healthcare information is accessed. This important relationship with Microsoft marks the opportunity for clinicians to have access to patient data no matter where it resides, thereby improving the quality of care and lowering the cost.”

 

The alliance agreement builds upon Eclipsys’ long-term use of the Microsoft .NET (News - Alert) Platform technology to deliver its software applications. The partnership relation with Microsoft coincides with Eclipsys’ evolution to open up its solutions platform technology beyond its client base. The clients of Eclipsys’ had the ability to build applications on the Eclipsys solutions platform and since 2003, they have created approximately 2,000 medical logic modules and ObjectsPlus/XA applications that work with Eclipsys software.

 

Officials of Microsoft have noted that the agreement is part of Eclipsys’ open platform initiative, by which it plans to expand its reach by working in close proximity with other industry participants to enhance interoperability and also helping third parties to develop new applications that work natively with Eclipsys solutions.

 

“An open platform approach to healthcare information technology is expected to deliver much-needed relief to technology managers challenged to free up data trapped in old, proprietary systems,” Aurelia G. Boyer, senior vice president and chief information officer, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, said. “We are longtime users of Sunrise Enterprise and an early adopter of Microsoft Amalga. Our work with Microsoft has helped us develop a more patient-centric approach by connecting the diverse health information systems from hospital to home to community. The combination of these solutions provides the opportunity to deliver faster, better data liquidity to enable us to improve clinical outcomes and less-costly mandatory public reporting.”

 

In related news, Eclipsys has been selected by Sound Shore Health System to create an integrated electronic health record.