News
Microsoft acquires Thai healthcare information systems company
30 October 2007
Microsoft is buying a hospital information system from a Thai software
company. It has agreed to acquire software, intellectual property and
other assets from Global Care Solutions (Thailand) Company Limited (GCS
Thailand), a privately held company based in Bangkok that has developed
a total hospital information system and a radiology information system
(picture archiving and communication system).
GCS Thailand has designed and developed its end-to-end healthcare system
in collaboration with Bangkok's Bumrungrad Hospital, the largest
privately held hospital in Southeast Asia. The internationally
accredited hospital uses the GCS solution to manage clinical workflow,
billing, regulatory compliance and medical records. The hospital treats
more than 1.2 million patients each year, including 400,000
international patients. The system is also installed in seven hospitals
around the Asia-Pacific region.
Microsoft says it will continue to work closely with Bumrungrad to
further build the functionality and features of the GCS technology. GCS
employees will join Microsoft's Health Solutions Group, which will
manage product development and delivery. Financial terms were not
disclosed.
Bumrungrad Hospital itself invested $630,000 in buying 30% of GCS
Thailand shares in September. GCS Thailand is owned by parent company
Global Care Solutions SA of Luxembourg and of which Bumrungrad Hospital
already owned 14%.
"We were impressed by Global Care Solutions' state-of-the-art health
information system, which has enabled a hugely complex facility like
Bumrungrad International hospital to achieve amazing outcomes related to
improved workflow and patient safety," said Peter Neupert, corporate
vice president for the Health Solutions Group at Microsoft.
"The international, fully integrated nature of the GCS technology, and
the fact that it is built from the ground up on scalable Microsoft
technology, makes this a great addition to our portfolio of health
enterprise products as we look to power developing and emerging hospital
systems around the globe."
"Half of the 3,200 patients we see each day arrive without
appointments," said Mack Banner, the chief executive officer of the
hospital. "The GCS solution has allowed us to manage scheduling demands,
multiple languages and medical records so efficiently that the average
waiting time to see a doctor is only 17 minutes. The GCS software is a
key to our service delivery, medical quality and financial performance,
and we look forward to collaborating with Microsoft on extending its
applications across our organization."
The offering from GCS, which has been on the market since 2000, won a
Microsoft Certified Partner award for Data Management Solution of the
Year in 2003 as an industry-leading acute care, clinical-patient
information solution. Global Care Solution's system is a fully
integrated suite of 50 clinical and back-office application modules
designed and optimized to run all hospital clinical and administrative
operations on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft SQL Server
2005.
The new Microsoft offering based on the GCS technology will complement
the company's health-intelligence software Azyxxi, which it bought from
Washington DC-based MedStar Health in July 2006. Azyxxi provides a data
integration capability for hospitals with legacy systems already in
place and serves as a repository for all of a patient’s routine clinical
information.
"We have been developing this product passionately for several years and
are thrilled to see a company with the resources of Microsoft poised to
bring it to a bigger world stage," said Pat Downing, CEO of Global Care
Solutions. "This is the perfect time in our company's history to
accelerate worldwide availability and allow our product to bring new
light to health organizations across the globe, where the deployment of
information technology can translate directly to better healthcare and,
ultimately, healthier people."
This latest move in the healthcare arena follows Microsoft's acquisition
of intelligent medical search technology company Medstory in February
this year. Also in February it released the Microsoft Connected Health
Framework Architecture and Design Blueprint, which it calls "a free and
extensible architectural foundation to simplify interoperability and
integration between healthcare solutions". In September Microsoft
launched the free Common User Interface, which it developed in
collaboration with NHS Connecting for Health, and earlier this month it
entered the consumer health market with the launch of HealthVault,
its free online platform for storing health records and searching for
health-related information.
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