Microsoft. MicroHealth? HealthSoft? Isn’t This A Technology Company?
What exactly does it mean when Microsoft, the eight-thousand-pound gorilla of the technology world, moves into healthcare?
Could it be construed as an intelligent business tactic, making up for lost dollars on the less-then-stellar debut of Windows Vista? Is it a growing, all-too-tempting new target for hackers? Or is it the first glimpse of a new dawn in private healthcare?
In July 2006 Microsoft made a quiet move on a small Washington-based company called Azyxxi. Founded by three doctors in 1996, Azyxxi developed a solution for the digital patient records questions facing the hospital world: How do we do this? Is it cost effective? And how do we share the information?
Azyxxi’s answer was to create a central database where patient records could be uploaded and accessed, in real-time, from any doctors office in the country subscribing to the service. Azyxxi now provides a cost effective alternative to the inescapable problems of individual hospitals each building their own internal digital infrastructure, and the headache of trying to figure out how to get each individual system to communicate with each other.
Personally I didn’t give this bit of healthcare news much thought. But yesterday Microsoft acquired another healthcare rising star that made me sit up and take notice.
Medstory is a small niche-search company, which touts the ability to provide the most relevant information to your healthcare query. In unofficial trials they beat both Google and Yahoo! in health-based searches. Not so sure they’re really that good? Check it out. Thus far, I’m impressed.
Ok, so Microsoft has acquired a company that is rapidly becoming a fore-runner in the world of digital records solutions, and they’ve acquired a search engine with the right algorithms and smarts to beat out Google in health based searches?
Anyone see a possible connection lying in the future?
Imagine a world where both doctors and patients are able to access their medical records from anywhere in the country (if not the planet.) If there is a word or term a patient doesn’t understand, Medstory is there to help them out.
Fixated on self-diagnosis? How about the ability to reference your own medial records while searching for your potential hypo-condriated illness?
Of course with such an insanely large target for an Internet security breach, one has to wonder just how fortified this system will be. Hackers have long focused on targets that would gain the most attention and garnish the most chaos… and this one looks like it would be a doozy (even Azyxxi as it stands now is a heck of a temptation.) Especially when considering that this life-changing information database is controlled by Microsoft, everyone’s favorite, security-holes-the-size-of-Texas, buddy.
Beyond the potential for revolutionizing the way we digest health information (and potentially having that information hacked), one also must consider the possibility of this being the beginning of a new major player entering the healthcare world. One with the technology and finances to back it up…
Last week, a small story appeared in papers across America from the Associated Press. The small article centered on a subject that apparently wasn’t thought overly news-worthy: Bill Gates teaming with the Canadian government to create an AIDS vaccine.
Contributing fifty-million dollars of his own money (in combination with Canada’s one-hundred-plus million) will create one of the biggest, privately funded vaccine research initiatives in history. Its goal: Simple, produce a viable vaccine within a decade.
That and, once produced, make it readily available for the population of the planet.
In my mind, it’s no small piece of the puzzle that this is occurring outside of the Pharma-uber-friendly US borders. And it gives one pause to consider the implications it will have if the initiative succeeds.
Not only will it drastically alter a global economic health problem, but also, solidify a potential giant in the health industry, who clearly from their recent acquisitions, is rapidly gaining steam.
Look out America. Here comes HealthSoft… Err, MicroCare… Err… Oh, whatever…
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