Healthcare IT News - March 2008 - (Page 32)

32 Healthcare IT News ■ March 2008 vENdoRS www.HealthcareITNews.com Progress helps Partners HealthCare manage its network By ErIC WICkluNd, Managing Editor BOSTON – With dozens of hospitals and healthcare providers stretched across eastern Massachusetts, the Partners HealthCare System is a study in complexity. Little wonder, then, that the system, anchored by Boston-based Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, struggled initially to manage its Web-based communications network. Enter Progress Software, a Belmont, Mass.-based provider of Web services management solutions. Progress deployed its Actional Web services and SOA management technology to help Partners manage external and internal Web-based operations, ranging from communications with outside vendors and e-prescribing to physician paging and data integration with an electronic medical record. “We didn’t always know who is using what service. We didn’t have control,” said Daniel Fitzpatrick, software engineer for Partners’ Applications Framework and Infrastructure Group. “We really had no footprint before Progress. We needed someone to come in and provide that direction.” By deploying Actional, which is standards-based and designed for monitoring loosely coupled Web services, Partners was able to manage all of its Web applications. Policies could be created and applied to specific services or groups of services, and security could be handled on the enterprise level. Hub Vandervoort, CTO of Progress Software, likens his product to a fortress, with Progress providing the wall around Partners. “Healthcare today is highly dis- tributed and highly decentralized,” he said. “Complicating that are the escalating regulations. … What we want to do is provide the fortress ring around that environment, providing one common place where (the provider) can assert policy or anything that comes in the door.” Fitzpatrick said Partners and Progress have “only had fairly basic points of integration” so far, and he expects the process to get more complicated as Partners moves closer to a full SOA environment. One of the biggest challenges ahead, he said, may lie in managing and securing legacy services. Vandervoort, meanwhile, wants to see more process analytics. “The depth and scope of that will continue to evolve,” he said. “There will always be new projects to take on.” ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: MaNaGe 0308 ● ouTCoMEs Continued from page 1 Taking care of the little things makes all the difference. We connect more providers to more payers than anyone else. But what really sets us apart is all the little things we do for both that make the business of claims and payments so much more efficient. Discover how Emdeon is changing the business of healthcare. Visit www.emdeon.com today. Simplifying the Business of Healthcare company then raised its projected revenues for 2008 by $10 million, from a range of $506 million to $518 million to $516 million-$528 million. “The acquistion of EPSi reinforces our commitment to the financial decision support space,” said R. Andrew Eckert, Eclipsys’ president and CEO, in a press release. “ We look forward to building on our company’s leadership position in this market.” Based in Atlanta, Eclipsys provides clinical, revenue cycle, access management and business performance software and service to healthcare providers, based primarily around the Sunrise suite of products. Two of its clients, the University Health System of San Antonio, Texas, and St. Clair Hospital in Pittsburgh, recently received Stage 6 ranking from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Analytics EMR Adoption Model, the highest milestone currently conferred by HIMSS Analytics for EMR adoption. Like Eclipsys’ solutions, EPSi’s solutions are based on the Microsoft SQL platform, making them Webbased, scalable, flexible and easy to implement. The addition of the EPSi product suite is designed to accelerate Eclypsis’ timeline for delivering an SQL-based business decision support solution. “Eclipsys and EPSi are a winning combination for our clients and the market, as both companies are committed to delivering clients real value and real results,” said Tim Rutledge, EPSi’s president. Eckert said Rutledge and his employees are expected to continue their employment. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com Patient Access Management • Claim Management • Remittance & Payment Distribution • Patient Billing & Payment e ● Connect: eMDeoN 0308 e ●Connect: outcoMeS 0308 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8891 http://www.emdeon.com http://www.emdeon.com http://HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8852

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Healthcare IT News - March 2008 Contents No. 1 E-prescribing ‘Quite Bright’ Bill Frist on IT Google Connection Poised for P4P ‘Smashing Success’ Tough On Fraud It's Analytics Getting Rid of the Pain Stuck In Neutral

Healthcare IT News - March 2008

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