News
Milton Keynes Hospital Trust becomes first Microsoft Amalga UIS
customer in the UK
20 January 2010
Microsoft Corp. has announced that Milton Keynes Hospital NHS
Foundation Trust has become the first UK customer for its Amalga Unified
Intelligence System (UIS) 2009.
Launched in April last year, Microsoft Amalga UIS is an enterprise
data aggregation platform for healthcare, enabling hospitals and health
professionals to unlock the patient data stored in a wide range of
existing systems and make it easily accessible to every authorised
member of the team inside and beyond the hospital.
The system collects data from disparate sources, empowering clinical
staff with relevant patient information to help them make more informed
decisions in relation to patient care.
It allows hospitals and health professionals to build on existing
systems to improve quality of care and deliver performance management
and reporting that can lead to maximising payments and improved cost
efficiencies within the hospital.
Milton Keynes Hospital will use the system to bring together clinical
and operational data from 10 disparate core business applications and
connect key staff to the information needed to carry out vital tasks,
from providing patient advice and care through to financial planning and
better management of care and performance. This will in turn allow
hospital staff to make more informed and effective decisions based on
comprehensive evidence.
Microsoft Amalga UIS will also make reporting much more efficient and
flexible, helping Milton Keynes Hospital to achieve its desire for
better performance and reporting, while meeting government mandates,
such as 18-week referral to treatment requirements and care pathways.
“The Microsoft solution complements and enhances both our nationally
provided systems and other legacy systems already in place, providing a
comprehensive view of clinical information from multiple sources within
the Hospital,” said David Powell, Head of IM&T at Milton Keynes
Hospital.
The Trust’s Finance Director Wayne Preston added: “Making major
service improvements while reducing costs looks like a tough proposition
at first glance, but we already have the means to achieve this at our
disposal. We are now much better positioned to leverage the solutions
available through NPfIT. Most hospitals have all the data they need
within their underlying systems to make significant service improvements
— it is just locked up in data silos.”
Dr Sandro Lanzon-Miller, the Trust’s Medical Director, commented:
“Microsoft Amalga UIS is a central component of our strategy as it makes
our data much more accessible, particularly for clinicians. It also
aggregates information, meaning we can gain a full picture of what is
happening both historically and in real time. We believe this will not
only help us to operate much more efficiently but, more importantly,
increase patient safety and quality of care.”
Steve Shihadeh, VP Health Solutions Group at Microsoft, said,
“Microsoft Amalga UIS is already in use at over 115 hospitals globally,
where it helps improve patient care and organisational efficiency by
turning data into meaningful information. At the same time, it helps
reduce costs, accelerate processes and deliver superior levels of
patient care.
“Many hospitals really are sitting on a gold mine of patient and
hospital data in the UK, but we have proved in every hospital we have
worked with that the data already held can be made to work better for
patients, clinicians and hospital managers. With greater accessibility
and aggregation, healthcare professionals can deliver the insights and
analysis that health providers need to make huge progress.”
The Amalga solution was procured through technology solutions
provider, SCC, as prime contractor under the Buying Solutions IT Goods
and Associated Services Framework — A217833/L1. This simplified,
auditable procurement route with pre-agreed terms and conditions,
allowed the Trust to both meet its tight project deadlines and reduce
its procurement costs.
Milton Keynes Hospital is committed to leading the way in NHS best
practice, better utilising NHS Connecting for Health solutions and
recognises that a joined-up approach to data is central to this.
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