Mr. HIStalk now brings us the news that Microsoft is serious about its HIT strategy and has created an "integrated" package out of the software odds-and-ends that it has picked up along the way. Here's an excerpt from his note in its entirety (boldface emphasis mine):
Microsoft announces that it’s now in the HIS business, renaming Azyxxi (thanks!) to Amalga and making up a new software category for it called Unified Intelligence Systems. Also in the new blended family is Microsoft Amalga HIS and RIS/PACS. I say “blended” because this is the Hospital 2000 software Microsoft bought from Global Care Solutions just three months ago, developed for Bumrungrad Hospital in Thailand.
Apparently Microsoft has studied our industry carefully because it followed all the longstanding rules with Amalga: (1) buy something that some hospital developed for its own use instead of doing your own R&D; (2) roll it out with much fanfare even though it’s got only a handful of live sites; (3) proclaim it to be integrated with the step-siblings; (4) start selling it quickly even though so little time has passed between its acquisition that there’s no way it’s really ready for production use; and (5) “upgrade” the hospital that developed it, at least on paper, so it can serve as a reference site so somebody might actually step forward to be its first paying customer. The whole enterprise had only 71 Thailand-based employees when Microsoft bought it, so one might logically question exactly how they’ll provide support and implementation services (unless one knows Microsoft, which nearly always pre-announces its intentions as a blocking or testing-the-waters move long before really having anything ready to go).
I have discussed Global Care Solutions and Bumrungrad Hospital in previous notes. Microsoft refers to Amalga in its press release as a Family of Health Enterprise Systems. Like Mr. HIStalk, this "amalga-mation" strikes me as a rather dysfunctional family. As I was saying, what we really need in the healthcare software industry is more smoke-and-mirrors. This can't be good news. I was feeling a little guilty about trashing Microsoft in a previous note (see: One More Opinion About the Future Prospects for Microsoft), but I am now feeling much more virtuous.
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