Microsoft Announces the Amalga Family of Health Enterprise Systems

Microsoft has officially announced the “Microsoft Amalga Family of Health Enterprise Systems”, which will be demonstrated publicly for the ‘first time’ at HIMSS 2008.

Now the name Amalga is actually preserved from the RIS/PACS solution of GlobalCare Solution (GCS), the new name is now Microsoft Amalga RIS/PACS and I’m actually quite proud to say that I know the person who came up with the name ‘Amalga’ 🙂

The new Amalga family of products consist of 3 products;

Microsoft Amalga (Data Mining)
The new version of the product formerly known as Azyxxi, Amalga is part of a new software category called Unified Intelligence Systems that allows hospital enterprises to unlock the power of all their data sitting in isolated clinical, financial and administrative systems. Without replacing current systems, it offers an innovative way to capture, consolidate, store, access and quickly present data in meaningful ways for use by clinicians and executives of leading-edge institutions. Amalga is designed for hospitals and health systems that have invested in a diverse set of IT solutions.

Microsoft Amalga Hospital Information System (HIS)
 The new version of the product previously named Hospital 2000, Amalga HIS is a state-of-the-art, fully integrated hospital information system designed for developing and emerging markets. Amalga HIS is built around an electronic medical record (EMR) with complete patient and bed management, laboratory, pharmacy, radiology information system and picture archiving and communication system (RIS/PACS), pathology, financial accounting, materials management, and human resource systems.

Microsoft Amalga RIS/PACS
The new version of the product formerly known as GCS Amalga is now available as a stand-alone system as well as an integrated component of Amalga HIS. The integrated architecture means that a radiologist can use a single application to manipulate and study images and access the patient medical record. The workstation interface is optimized for radiologist workflow, including support for predefined templates, an intuitive report editor and voice recognition capabilities.

When I first saw the news, I called up an old friend (and mentor) from GCS (well, he’s with Microsoft now) to find out more about the changes (and also to catch up) and while I’m very excited that Microsoft is now offically going to venture into the Healthcare Informatics arena, I’m also glad that they do not have a Cardiovascular Solution yet (else they would be my direct competitor! )

Now I wonder if my “Certified PACS Administrator” certificate from GCS will be worth something in my resume…  🙂