I'd like to draw your attention to a very thoughtful piece in HHN Most Wired written by well-known CIO, John Glaser, and his Partners Healthcare CTO, Steve Flammini.  These guys are highly respected healthcare IT veterans and thought leaders in the industry.  If Glaser and Flammini believe Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is the future, and perhaps salvation of applications for healthcare, I'd challenge anyone to say it isn't so.  Rightfully, the authors draw our attention to the fact this is no panacea and healthcare organizations and application vendors must move forward with due diligence and some degree of caution.  Nonetheless, for all the stated reasons, SOA is indeed where the industry is headed.

With that in mind, I would like to offer a valuable resource to IT executives, chief medical information officers, solution architects, industry solution vendors, and others who have a particular interest in developing or deploying the next generation of SOA healthcare industry applications for business or clinical use.  It is the just published Connected Health Framework executive whitepaper and architecture and design blueprint.  What is the Connected Health Framework and what is its value proposition to the industry?  My good friend and colleague, and Microsoft's senior healthcare technical strategist, Roberto Ruggeri, sums it up best on his Healthcare IT Blog.  If you would like to look over the CHF documents and other resources, you'll find them here: You can also find information about the Connected Health Framework on our corporate site. The landing page on microsoft.com is here.  Filed under:

My thanks go out to Roberto and our entire extended team across the globe for their very fine work in delivering this important resource.  I know the team looks forward to your comments and suggestions.  You can share those here: SolShare.net healthcare forums

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bill Crounse, MD      Healthcare Industry Director      Microsoft Corporation