By Steve Aylward, General Manager, US Commercial Health & Life Sciences



Every year, the Microsoft Health Users Group (HUG)  recognizes forward-thinking health organizations and their technology solutions partners who use Microsoft-based technology to improve patient care, reduce costs and streamline clinical and business processes in measurable ways that can serve a model for others. Today, we are excited to recognize the achievements of the 15th annual Microsoft HUG Innovation Awards winners at the 2012 HIMSS Annual Conference & Exhibition.

In no particular order, the following are the four recipients of the 2012 Microsoft HUG Innovation Awards:

  • Health Collaboration Category: Vectorform and Massachusetts General Hospital –Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S., but also 100% preventable if polyps are detected early enough through quick and efficient screening. To make colon cancer screening more broadly accessible and cost-effective, the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) partnered with Vectorform, Microsoft and Intel to develop the Virtual Colonoscopy (VC) Viewer, a multi-touch, HPC-cloud-based virtual colonoscopy viewer that allows physicians to interact with a 3-D rendering of a patient’s colon. The VC Viewer relies on Microsoft Azure to translate a series of CT scans of the patient’s abdomen into a 3-D representation, which is then saved to Microsoft HealthVault . Using a 3-D GPU Volume Rendering Engine created by Microsoft Research, the images are then rendered in real-time and can be viewed via Windows 7 devices, including mobile phones. This virtual screening method has shown that it can significantly streamline clinical workflow, resulting in an astonishing 2,000 percent performance gain which included reduced processing times to one minute. Moreover, this approach improved diagnostic accuracy and also reduced costs by 80 percent compared to traditional methods.
  • Modernizing Health Systems and Information Category: Pluralsoft and the Colorado Community Managed Care Network - The Colorado Community Managed Care Network (CCMCN) partnered with PluralSoft to build the Colorado Associated Community Health Information Enterprise  (CACHIE), a clinical quality reporting and analysis solution used to manage chronic diseases and preventive care. The CACHIE quickly and easily extracts data from electronic medical records and patient management systems from within the CCMCN’s Federally Qualified Health Centers, which are periodically required to report clinical quality performance, population health statistics and business performance metrics to federal and state funding agencies. CACHIE leverages Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and others to improve data-driven processes and enable faster information delivery. With the CACHIE, the CCMCN has noted measurable improvements in clinical quality, including a 16 percent increase in immunization rates for children younger than two years old. Additional benefits include increased grant awards and improved reporting and workflow that resulted in an 85 percent reduction in staff time.
  • Health Information Management Category: Sogeti Sverige AB and the County Council of Norrbotten – With 7,000 employees spread throughout five hospitals and 32 medical centers across a large part of Sweden, the County Council of Norrbotten (CCN), which oversees the county’s health system, was faced with a critical need to efficiently share information across functional and geographic distances. The CCN employed an in-house Healthcare Enterprise System, VIS-Care, developed in partnership with Sogeti Sverige AB, to deliver a single electronic healthcare record per patient. VIS-Care leverages Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 to deliver a complete information system to each hospital and medical center.  All information in the portal is then tagged with metadata, for example, based on the international code registry of ICD10. Standardized workflows for producing, reviewing, approving and revising routines ensure that each CCN organization uses a standardized way of documenting patient care routines. As a result, the CCN can produce a single patient view by aggregating a patient’s information from across the entire country, including 100 percent of e-referrals and 98 percent of a patient’s e-prescriptions.
  • Flexible Mobile Workstyle Solutions Category: Endomondo –Endomondo is a social sports and fitness network with community tools that enable people worldwide to engage around their passions for living vital, healthy lives. It centers on activities and sports that unify physically active individuals and promote exercise for fitness buffs and serious athletes alike.  Endomondo’s mission is to make fitness fun and engaging. Available as a Windows Phone 7 application, Endomondo leverages Bing maps for real-time GPS tracking of training progress and enables users to measure their distance covered, compete with friends and send friends pep-talks that are read aloud in real-time. The network currently tracks up to 200,000 workouts per day and a project conducted in Europe showed a 28% percent increase in exercise activities of those engaged in the community.

If your health organization has achieved similar improvements in patient care or helped improve consumer health with the use of Microsoft’s technology, please share it with our Microsoft HUG community of 9,000 members here.

We would like to also give a special thanks to each of this year’s judges: Josh Fisher, Founder and Managing Partner at PresPoint Capital, Ahmad Hashem, MD, PhD, Chairman and CEO at Rawasi Investing Group, LLC, Charlene Marietti, Executive Director of Editorial Initiatives at The Vendome Group, LLC, Mark Hagland, Editor-In Chief, Healthcare Informatics, Scott Lundstrom, Group Vice President, IDC Health Insights, Doris Nessim, B.Sc.Phm., R.Ph., M.A. Healthcare, Pharmacy and Patient Safety Advisor, GS1 Canada, Benjamin Rooks, Principal at ST Advisors, LLC, Jay Srini, Chief Strategist at SCS Ventures and Adjunct Faculty Asst Professor at the University of Pittsburgh and Andrew Ury, M.D., Chief Medical Officer at Aucolla, LLC.