IPad App To Help Improve Medical Data Collection

June 14, 2012 | by

Intake interviews — the long series of forms and questions that patients must fill out and answer prior to receiving medical care — are critical for accurate diagnosis and treatment. However, they’re boring and can be confusing, which decreases the rate at which patients respond accurately and completely. The company Tonic Health is trying to revolutionize data collection with a patient-friendly iPad app called Tonic that promises to make the process of an intake interview fun and interactive — game-like, even — for patients.

Tonic iPad app

GE Healthcare And Microsoft Partner To Launch Health Information Technology Company

January 2, 2012 | by

GE Healthcare and Microsoft recently announced plans to create a joint venture aimed at helping healthcare organizations and professionals use real-time, system-wide intelligence to improve healthcare quality and the patient experience.

The new health information technology company will develop and market an open, interoperable technology platform and innovative clinical applications focused on enabling better population health management to improve outcomes and the overall economics of health and wellness. The joint venture will combine Microsoft’s expertise in building platforms and ecosystems with GE Healthcare’s experience in clinical and administrative workflow solutions.

GE Healthcare and Microsoft

The as of yet unnamed new company will deliver a distinctive, open platform that will give healthcare providers and independent software vendors the ability to develop a new generation of clinical applications. The venture will develop healthcare applications on the platform using in-house developers and the platform will connect with a wide range of healthcare IT products. GE Healthcare IT will immediately be able to connect existing products to the platform, helping current customers to derive new insights.

The two companies will contribute the following intellectual property:

  • Microsoft Amalga, an enterprise health intelligence platform that brings historically disparate data together and makes it easy to identify and act on insights into clinical, financial or operational performance.
  • Microsoft Vergence, a technology that brings single sign-on, context management and multi-factor authentication together on a clinical workstation.
  • Microsoft expreSSO, a solution to simplify and streamline the organizational rollout of single sign-on.
  • GE Healthcare eHealth, a framework for delivering clinical applications on top of a connected healthcare community. Its foundation is a portal technology that provides clinicians a web-based, simple way to view patient data from a health information exchange.
  • GE Healthcare Qualibria, a clinical knowledge application environment that helps ensure that organizations can more effectively manage to the latest measures of quality and thrive in today’s performance-based world.

The long-term vision of the venture is to create new value by offering a healthcare performance management suite that includes many of these products.

Jeffrey R. Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE, said:

The complementary nature of GE Healthcare’s and Microsoft’s individual expertise will drive new insights, solutions and efficiencies to further advance the two companies’ shared vision of a connected, patient-centric healthcare system. The global healthcare challenges of access, cost and quality of care delivery are creating a new focus on the performance and accountability of healthcare delivery systems –- in every country, at every level of care. This venture will demonstrate what is possible when leading companies with complementary capabilities work together to meet a common goal.

Source: Microsoft