Healthcare IT News - March 2008 - (Page 33)

www.HealthcareITNewscom vENdoRS March 2008 ■ Healthcare IT News 33 “We’re at a stage right now where hospitals can’t even produce SImplE QualIty REpoRtS.” – Ivo Nelson SunQuest emerges from Misys’ shadow By ErIC WICkluNd, Managing Editor aNalyTICs Continued from page 31 of data.” What isn’t readily available, he said, is a means for collecting the data from various silos and disparate systems, collating and analyzing it and using it to improve healthcare delivery, whether it be clinical, financial or administrative. “We’re at a stage right now where hospitals can’t even produce simple quality reports,” he said. And with the introduction of quality-based pay-for-performance programs, he added, “they’re not nearly as responsive as what they’re going to need to be.” IBM’s new direction was emphasized repeatedly at HIMSS08, during which IBM executives pointed out that their recent acquisition of Toronto-based Cognos gives them good positioning in the analytics market. “There has been static data in EMRs for many years and it has continued to be dependent on paper,” said Dan Pelino, general manager for IBM Global Healthcare and Life Sciences, during a separate press session. “Healthcare leaders have to take the next step beyond, moving into the analytics field. The market is mature enough to be able to extract and aggregate data. Early innovators will be rewarded.” Nelson said IBM will market its new suite of services from an enterprise level, creating a 12-week program that allows new customers to gradually work their way into developing data, using tools and putting governance in place to manage data. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: aNalyticS 0308 When Misys Healthcare sold its diagnostic systems business to a private equity firm last July, it allowed the Sunquest name to re-emerge from the shadows. Richard Atkin couldn’t be happier. “The return of the Sunquest name was icing on the cake,” said the president and CEO of the Tucson, Ariz.-based supplier of diagnostic information systems. “We felt that it was absolutely the best thing that could occur for this business.” Atkin calls this year’s HIMSS show and conference “a coming-out party of sorts” for Sunquest Information Systems, which was founded in 1979 and acquired by Misys in 2001. The company had its own booth this ORLANDO, FL – year in Orlando, and Atkin and his staff are busy pointing out a string of product enhancements and new solutions that Sunquest has announced since its departure from the Misys world. To wit, Sunquest traveled to the Arab Health Conference in Dubai in January to show off its laboratory information system software, then launched its CoPathPlus 4.0 anatomic pathology software on Feb. 4 and its Collection Manager 3.0 add-on module on Feb. 12. Atkin said Sunquest enjoyed the support of Misys during its brief tenure with the company, but was just one part of a portfolio of Misys products. Once the company was acquired on July 22, 2007 by Vista Equity Hospital of Saint Raphael in New Haven, said the hospital is now implementing Misys Connect, and will soon establish electronic medical record and practice management modules that they’ll host in an ASP form. The hospital, Burchell said, will serve as the information hub, around which the other healthcare providers involved in the project will coordinate. “The grant is the catalyst,” said Davidson. “The grant really gets people in the community to say, ‘You know what, I’m going to do it.’ Otherwise, you see a lot of physicians out there who don’t necessarily want to change what they’re doing.” Burchell said it’s still too early to determine if New Haven or Tampa will stand the expand its business in the healthcare sector. “Integrating patient monitoring into healthcare informatics enables us to find synergies between our software competencies and monitoring solutions recently strengthened by the acquisitions of XIMIS, Emergin and VISICU,” said Oran Muduroglu, chief executive officer of Healthcare Informatics for Philips Healthcare. Dolan said the more intelligent medical Partners, a San Francisco-based private equity firm, he said, Sunquest was able to present itself again as a stand-along company with a specific set of products. “We have our focus again,” he said. Atkin says Sunquest has focused on laboratory-based solutions in the past, and is now developing pathology and microbiology protocols. He points out that more than half of the lab tests now being done by hospitals are done on an outreach basis, in that they benefit not only the hospital but the community as a whole. To that end, he said, Sunquest has to evolve, and create newer, broad-based products. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e ●Connect: SHaDow 0308 CoNNECTEd Continued from page 31 System, one of the city’s two hospitals, the Tampa project (approved last November) is centered on physician practices. At least 90 practices have applied to be part of the project, she said, and she expects 25 to 30 practices to stay involved. “It’s not often you see this type of information exchange being tried by something other than a hospital system,” she said. “This is a real community decision, not being driven by one organization. They’re doing it in a very consensus-driven fashion.” Burchell and Gary R. Davidson, vice president and chief information officer at the test of time and prove to be self-sufficient, but she’s optimistic. “Ultimately, what we’d like to show is, if an entire community is interconnected, then what happens?” she asked. “That’s a longterm investment. We want to make sure we’re investing $10 million in software and hardware in something that’s going to be around in five years.” Burchell is also looking for a slightly different community in this round of applications. While New Haven and Tampa are relatively large cities, she pointed out, she’d like to see a smaller community or a rural environment take on the project next. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e ●Connect: coNNecteD 0308 rEsTruCTurE Continued from page 31 ● aMalga Continued from page 31 solutions and services include patient monitoring, enterprise and clinical management systems, anesthesia IT, women’s health IT, and cardiology information systems. The Amsterdam, Netherlands-based electronics giant recently acquired several healthcare IT companies as it looks to devices, diagnostic tools and decision support tools are not meant to replace evaluations by clinicians, but rather enable clinicians to spend less time reviewing normal results and more time on the exceptional results. ■ Additional reporting by Jack Beaudoin from HIMSS08. More at HealthcareITNews.com e ●Connect: reStructure 0308 the Azyxxi product and part of the company’s new unified intelligence systems software category. • Microsoft Amalga Hospital Information System (HIS), a new version of the Hospital 2000 product which is built around an electronic medical record (EMR). • Microsoft Amalga RIS/PACS, a new version of the product formerly known as GCS Amalga, now being made available as a stand-alone system as well as an integrated component of Amalga HIS. MedStar Health, a community-based network of eight hospitals and other healthcare services in the Baltimore-Washington D.C. area, has gone live with Amalga, while beta versions were tested out earlier at NewYorkPresbyterian Hospital and the Johns Hopkins Health System, among others. “One of the healthcare enterprise’s biggest issues is that providers and executives can’t access patient information when, where and how they need it,” said Steve Shihadeh, general manager for Microsoft’s Health Solutions Group, in a press release. “Microsoft’s Amalga products offer proven solutions that bring together information from across the healthcare enterprise into one easily accessible view.” ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: aMalGa 0308 ● e ● Connect: laSerficHe 0308 http://www.healthcareitnews.com http://HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8892 http://HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8889 http://HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8886 http://HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8888 http://www.laserfiche.com/HIT http://www.laserfiche.com/HIT http://HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8887

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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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