The WW Health ICT Blog

director, worldwide health industry solutions

More efficient PC management and security for health organizations

teddyb — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 21:50:46 GMT

Windows Intune is one of many Microsoft cloud services that can help you centrally manage and secure your PCs with a comprehensive, end-to-end Microsoft solution that includes PC management, endpoint protection, Windows upgrades, and more. Whether for a clinic, hospital, health agency, payer, or other health organizations, Windows Intune will help you better manage your ICT risks and support your compliance initiatives. Windows Intune will help you:

- Manage software updates to all your PCs from a central location

- Safeguard your PCs from latest threats with centralized endpoint protection

- Track hardware and software assets to more efficiently manage you licenses

- Receive alerts on updates and threats for proactive monitoring of your PCs

- Assist users remotely to address issues they have with their PCs

- Set security policies to help protect your PCs even outside your network

Because the Windows Intune cloud service is hosted by Microsoft, you don't have the overhead of maintaining on-site PC management servers and software.

Windows Intune will be commercially available in over 30 countries on March 23, 2011. A free 30-day trial will be available on this date.

You can register to get notification on availability of the 30-day trial here.

More information on Windows Intune is available here.

director, worldwide health industry solutions

Microsoft HealthVault Community Connect

teddyb — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 00:35:13 GMT

Microsoft HealthVault Community Connect is a SharePoint Server and Microsoft Amalga based portal solution that enables healthcare organizations to easily generate electronic visit summaries and share them with their patients and provider community. HealthVault Community Connect helps health organizations provide better connections for better care:

· Connects your referral community

· Connects with your patients

· Connects with familiar technology

If you are interested in learning more how Microsoft technologies can help you unlock new services models to support your patients, referring providers, and bottom line, you can register for a complimentary webcast scheduled on Tuesday March 15, 2011.

During the webcast Karen Green (CIO, Brooks Rehabilitation) and Eric Moll (CAO, Mason General Hospital) will discuss how their organizations are leveraging Microsoft HealthVault Community Connect to better support their patients, referring providers and bottom lines.
During this webcast you will learn:

How Brooks Rehabilitation and Mason General Hospital are using Microsoft HealthVault Community Connect to better connect with their patients and referring communities
How HealthVault Community Connect can help you meet the Meaningful Use requirements related to "enabling patients and families" and "improving care coordination"
How HealthVault Community Connect can help clinicians improve the quality of care by providing them with a longitudinal view of their patients' health information
How providers can offer new online services to their patients and reduce cost of care by leveraging the rich ecosystem of HealthVault-enabled applications and devices

Register here to attend this webcast live or receive an email after the webcast with the presentation content if you cannot make it to the live event.

You can also learn more about HealthVault Community Connect and What’s Next in Health at Microsoft here.

director, worldwide health industry solutions

Resuming with Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM)

teddyb — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 04:34:45 GMT

It’s been few months since my last blog due to focusing on various health ICT activities at Microsoft. During this time, I tried to send few updates on the Health ICT twitter feed #whealthict. I am now back at a point where I can resume the updates on this blog, with sincere apologies to our readers for this long interruption.

Today we announced that we are in the development process (early beta) to provide Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM). I thought this would be a topic of great interest to ICT Professionals, ICT Compliance Managers and anyone working in the areas of security and compliance in the Health ICT world. MBAM will help your health organization more efficiently and cost effectively control health data breaches resulting from exposed (lost, stolen, or misplaced) desktops, laptops, hard drives, USB storage keys, etc.

MBAM will build on BitLocker available in Windows 7 today and help simplify BitLocker provisioning and deployment, reduce costs while improving compliance and reporting of BitLocker. The MBAM beta is expected to be available in March and you can sign up here (Windows Live ID required) to be notified when it is released. MBAM will available through the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) at a future date. Following is a summary of how MBAM can help you:

Integrates into existing Windows 7 deployment process: Organizations can integrate the MBAM client into their task sequence setup in System Center Configuration Manager/ Microsoft Deployment Toolkit or their other Windows 7 deployment tools. The client then automates the encryption process as part of the deployment.

End Users Can Start the Encryption Process: For organizations that deploy MBAM after they have deployed Windows 7, the MBAM agent provides a standard user the ability to start the encryption process. This enhances the BitLocker out of box experience where the end user must have administrative rights to accomplish this.

Target only the hardware you want to encrypt: ICT Professionals can exclude hardware by make and model, making sure that only machines capable of meeting the encryption policy are encrypted.

Improve Compliance and Reporting

Know how compliant the organization is: Security administrators and IT Professionals can understand which machines are encrypted and meet the organizational policy through out of the box reports.

More secure recovery key storage: ICT Professionals have an alternative to storing BitLocker recovery key information in Active Directory. Machines with the MBAM client will send BitLocker recovery key information to an encrypted Microsoft SQL Server database.

Reduce Support Costs

Streamline key recovery for the help desk: MBAM provides a web page that allows the help desk to quickly get the user’s recovery key if they get into BitLocker recovery mode. The help desk no longer needs access to Active Directory to access BitLocker recovery keys when the organization is using MBAM.

Use a recovery key only once: When a recovery key is retrieved and used, the MBAM client will automatically generate a new recovery key for that PC so that the original key cannot be used to gain access to the machine again

Empower end users to do the basics: MBAM allows an end user with standard user rights to perform basic BitLocker tasks like changing their PIN or start the encryption process which saves them from calling the help desk.

For more information on Bitlocker:

teddy bachour

director, worldwide health industry solutions

Call for Proposals for Microsoft HUG Exchange 2010 Now Open!

teddyb — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 18:45:06 GMT

Microsoft Health Users Group Exchange 2010 Transforming Health to Achieve Meaningful Use Microsoft Corporate Campus Redmond, WA September 22nd& 23^rd
Interested in presenting at Microsoft Health Users Group Exchange 2010 in Redmond, WA? The Call for Proposal process for the next event is now open! The Microsoft Health User Group is looking for submissions that detail innovative and inspiring solutions to healthcare, using Microsoft technology and frameworks. The following tracks are planned for the event: Developing Community Care - how to connect people, information and process to provide continuity of care. Topics may include RHIO, HIE, chronic condition management, wellness programs (e.g. weight loss or smoking cessation), home care, mobility and EMR. Intelligent Healthcare - gain an insight into Health Intelligence. Topics may include Business Intelligence, predictive modeling, QA reporting, operational efficiency, real time decision support, quality improvement, and population health metrics. Dynamic Infrastructure - build an infrastructure which is reliable and robust yet flexible to meet future demands. Topics may include Desktop Management, Server Management, Identity and Security, Virtualization, Cloud computing, seamless connectivity and mobility.
Please complete the online application by Friday, June 25, 2010 at 5:00 CDT to be considered as a possible presenter for this event. Submitters will be notified during the week of July 12th of the proposal status

*Please note: presentations must be focused on a Microsoft-based technology or solution. Please feel free to submit something that is relevant but outside of the scope of tracks listed. Be assured technical content is a plus.

director, worldwide health industry solutions

The Connected Health Platform Cloud and Clear.

Public comments period open for IHE IT Infrastructure (ITI) new supplements

teddyb — Wed, 26 May 2010 06:17:30 GMT

The IHE IT Infrastructure (ITI) Technical Committee has published the following supplements to the ITI Technical Framework for Public Comment. If you are involved with health data and information services projects, I encourage you to review these documents and post your comments before June 24.

Cross-Enterprise User Assertion - Attribute Extension (XUA++)
Deferred Document and Dynamically Created Content (D3S)
Healthcare Provider Directory (HPD)
Query Enhancements to Sharing Value Sets

The documents are available for download at http://www.ihe.net/Technical_Framework/public_comment.cfm. Comments should be submitted by June 24 to the online forums at http://forums.rsna.org/forumdisplay.php?f=198.

teddy bachour

senior industry technology strategist, ww health

Clinical Documentation Solution Accelerator now available for download!

teddyb — Wed, 12 May 2010 05:35:39 GMT

The Clinical Documentation Solution Accelerator (CDSA) for the Microsoft Office system is now released and available for you to download and start using in your clinical applications.

CDSA is a Connected Health Platform resource that enables you or your customer to define and create clinically encoded documents. Documents can be created based upon ready-made templates (for example, for a Discharge Summary or a Referral) retrieved using the Microsoft Office System.

Key Benefits for Your Organization

Improve productivity and reduce training costs
Quickly design and create clinical documents
Directly link to external data sources
Easily share encoded documents

You can find out more about the Clinical Documentation Solution Accelerator including overview and developer guidance videos at:

· The CDSA landing page is at http://www.mscui.net/CDSA.htm.

· The CDSA community project is at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/cdsa.

· The new version of MSCUI is at www.mscui.net.

You can find more information on all Connected Health Platform resources on the Health ICT Resource Center site at http://www.microsoft.com/HealthICT.

teddy bachour

senior industry technology strategist, ww health

Microsoft HUG Webcast on the Clinical Documentation Solution Accelerator (CDSA) - May 12

teddyb — Wed, 05 May 2010 17:32:27 GMT

I have a couple of blogs on CDSA here and here. CDSA was planned for release Mid April but we have experienced some delays. Andy Payne, the CUI PM from Microsoft UK who is leading this effort will provide an update on the new release date during the CDSA webcast. You can find below registration information for a webcast you don’t want to miss!

teddy bachour

senior industry technology strategist, ww health

Registration Now Open for the next Microsoft HUG Webcast: Creating Clinically Encoded, Interoperable Documents Using Microsoft Office Word 2010 and the Clinical Documentation Solution Accelerator

Wednesday, May 12, 2010
10:00 – 11:00 am CDT
(8:00 am PDT/ 10:00 am CDT / 11:00 pm EDT / 16:00 BST / 17:00 CEST)

Register Now!

The Clinical Documentation Solution Accelerator (CDSA) is a Connected Health Platform resource that enables you or your customer to define and create clinically encoded documents retrieved from a templates library (such as Discharge Summaries and Referral documents) using the Microsoft Office System. This Solution Accelerator promotes the safety and consistency of clinical documentation by utilizing the Microsoft Health Common User Interface software toolkit components to embed structured, machine readable clinical information encoded in industry standard formats (such as the HL7 CDA format) in a human-readable Microsoft Office document which can be shared across care boundaries.

Please join us for a demonstration of how you can quickly construct and customize encoded, interoperable clinical documents using CDSA and Microsoft Office Word 2010.

· These webcasts are FREE to all Microsoft HUG members / HIMSS members. You must have you Microsoft HUG/HIMSS membership # to register.

Speakers

Andy Payne, CUI PM Microsoft UKMCS

Martin Grayson, Consultant II Microsoft UKMCS

For more information visit the Microsoft HUG website.

Save the Date!

September 22nd and 23rd - Microsoft Health Users Group Exchange 2010: Redmond, WA

Don’t know your Microsoft HUG/HIMSS membership? microsofthug@himss.org

Not a member? You need to register for Microsoft HUG/HIMSS membership

Major updates to the Connected Health Platform guidance and tools

teddyb — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 15:37:48 GMT

Some of you may have noticed already that we have made a major updates to the Microsoft Connected Health Platform (CHP) area on the Health ICT Resource Center. The update affected the main CHP Silverlight based navigation UI and the guidance, tools and solution accelerator navigation page. The main CHP (Silverlight) page allows you to look at challenges, concerns, or issues from the perspective of a CEO, a CIO (or ICT Director) and a Care Professional. The UI will help you navigate to specific offerings (architecture, design and deployment guidance, tools or solution accelerators) that ICT departments in health organizations or partners can use today to build an Optimized Health ICT Infrastructure for the organization they serve.

These CHP offerings are built on top of a solid foundation of the Microsoft Infrastructure Optimization models and tools and further specialized for the health domain. They have also been used and validated in many solutions and deployments by our customers and partners worldwide.

The updates include various upgrades to existing guidance documents and tools and the following new guidance documents:

Microsoft Office Communications Server Design Guide
System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (SCCM) – To replace the guidance we had on Systems Management Server 2003

Deployment Guide
Software Distribution guidance
Software Update Management guidance
Operating System Deployment Guide

System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Guide

The following table provides detailed view of the changes included in this update:

teddy bachour

senior industry technology strategist, ww health

Release date for the Clinical Documentation Solution Accelerator

teddyb — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 13:48:37 GMT

Our team in the UK that is doing the great work on the Clinical Documentation Solution Accelerator (CDSA) for the Microsoft Office System, that we showcased at HIMSS earlier this month have indicated that it will be ready for general release on April 16th. CDSA is the release name for what was previously known as ‘Office Doctor’. ‘Office Doctor’ was showcased at HIMSS 2009 as a technology demonstrator product. This year we are releasing it as a full solution accelerator with guidance and source code that you can use to integrate this functionality in your products or solutions. You can access a video of the 2009 ‘Office Doctor’ here.

Our health specific solution accelerators, as the name indicates help you in two ways:

- The word ‘solution’ refers to the fact that they provide a basic solution or building block that addresses a common problem or challenge in the health domain. They are architected, built and designed using Microsoft and industry best practices and can be integrated and extended to fit your specific solution needs in the same domain scenario. These solution accelerators are available as free downloads along with source code where applicable and documentation.

- ‘accelerator’ means that they will help you accelerate your ramp up or learning experience on how to use our technology to solve the health domain problem(s) that the solution accelerator is meant to address. Since we have considerable engineering work done on these solution accelerators done upfront, they will help you speed time to market of your product or offering if you are a partner or planning and deployment of your solution if you are part of the ICT department in a health organization. Most importantly, for ICT managers and ICT project managers, these solution accelerators will help you better manage risks at different stages of the project lifecycle.

Following is a more detailed description of the CDSA that we will be releasing next month. You will be able to access it from the Health ICT Resource center:

The Clinical Documentation Solution Accelerator (CDSA) for the Microsoft^® Office system is a Connected Health Platform resource that enables you or your customer to define and create clinically encoded documents. You originate documents with ready-made templates (for example, for a Discharge Summary or a Referral) retrieved using the Microsoft Office System.

CDSA promotes the safety and consistency of clinical documentation by utilizing Microsoft Health Common User Interface software toolkit components. Those components support the embedding of structured, machine-readable clinical information in a human-readable Microsoft Office document shareable across care boundaries. The encoding of clinical information is to industry standard formats (such as the Health Level 7 (HL7) Clinical Document Architecture (CDA)).

This resource demonstrates the direct utilization of external clinical data (such as a cloud platform or Windows^® Azure™ source) in a document. Example external data sources include Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine - Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT^®) encoding services or drug reference data. This enables a powerful editing experience, specific to the healthcare domain but easy to use because it offers familiar, industry‑leading authoring tools, such as Microsoft^® Office Word 2007 or Microsoft^® Office Word 2010.

You can use CDSA as the foundation for clinical document workflows (for example, in combination with Microsoft^® Office SharePoint^® Server 2010). Tailor those to the specific Electronic Medical Record (EMR) or Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems in your own or your customer’s healthcare environment. In addition, CDSA will enable you to create clinical documents suitable for upload to a Personal Health Record (PHR) system (such as Microsoft^® HealthVault™), to an XDS.b system, or to other external storage.

It is easy to share clinical documents created using the CDSA, passing them across care boundaries whilst retaining the clinically encoded data. This is without the need for additional software on your reader’s computer. Systems integrating the CDSA functionality can also take advantage of Microsoft Office Information Rights Management (IRM) capabilities enabled by the Microsoft Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) to control access and usage of confidential health information stored in these documents regardless of where these documents are located.

teddy bachour

senior industry technology strategist, ww health