Microsoft Australia in Health

Folks, for those of you not on the Australian Institute for Health and Welfare's distribution list, the most current data on Healthcare Expenditure in Australia has been released. I am a little surprised (and somewhat pleased) that total expenditure has not yet clipped the $100B mark. The growth in the percentage of GDP that we spend on Health is also lower than I had expected (lots of focus on efficiency .... but demand is still on the rise). True to form the Australian Institute for Health and Welfare have provided us with more statistics than you can point a stick at:

http://www.aihw.gov.au/publications/index.cfm/title/10659

Folks some really cool adds that will challenge Apples view that only they are cool ..... I am a PC! 

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/windows/videoGallery.aspx

Folks, for those of you who have not seen this yet, we have just released the Sullivan Nicolaides Case Study, which was produced by one of our Partners working in Healthcare, Productiv. The case study outlines how Productiv used their skills in Microsoft's CRM, Mobility, InfoPath, SharePoint  and Office products to build a incident reporting solution for Sullivan Nicolaides. What makes this case study particularly interesting is that it demonstrates how a traditional Microsoft Partner can build genuine clinical performance improvements in Health & Social Services customers.

The case study can be found at at: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000002648

Folks, for those of you who are evaluating the use of Microsoft's Common User Interface work , V1.5 has been released to the web by our UK team on www.mscui.net and http://www.codeplex.com/mscui.

This is the fifth release of MSCUI since it was launched in July 2007. In that time we have seen over 285,000 unique visitors to the site, 24,000 downloads of the Design Guidance and 14,000 downloads of the Toolkit.

There are 4 key elements to this new release:

1. Publication of new and updated Design Guidance:
   1. New Micro Patient Banner guidance
   2. New Displaying Graphs and Tables guidance
   3. Updated Time Display guidance
   4. Updated Date and Time Input guidance
2. Publication of 6 new Controls for Silverlight 2 and WPF:
   1. New Silverlight and WPF PatientBanner controls
   2. New Silverlight and WPF AddressLabel controls
   3. New Silverlight and WPF ContactLabel controls
   4. New Silverlight and WPF GenderLabel controls
   5. New Silverlight and WPF IdentifierLabel controls
   6. New Silverlight and WPF NameLabel controls
3. Updates to the award winning Patient Journey Demonstrator which showcases CUI design guidelines, controls and future UI concepts in a Silverlight 2 application.
4. Publication of our new Team Blog, where we will be communicating on a wide range of topics.

Folks, the Inaugural Melbourne Unified Communications User Group Meeting will take place on Thursday the 23rd of October at Microsoft's office in Southbank. There is a Sydney equivalent that has already begun to meet (see: www.sydneyuc.org). These User Groups are open to both Customers and Partners.

Folks, this will be a wonderful advance in data entry. Rather than having to tap each letter when inputting data, Cliff Kushler has developed technology that is an advance on word suggestion. All you need to do is to 'swipe' an approximation of the word across the keyboard and the system will suggest the most appropriate word. Could this be the tipping point tool for clinical data entry on smart devices? .........

http://news.cnet.com/1606-2_3-50003669.html

Folks, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released their report on Public Health Spending today. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare is an excellent source of information and it is worth subscribing to their publication alerts.

You can find the Public Health Spending report at the following link: http://www.aihw.gov.au/publications/hwe/pheia06-07/pheia06-07.pdf Don't be put of by the 2006-07 FY it covers (that is as current as the publicly available data is in this country). What is interesting is that only $1.7B of the estimated $90B+ is spent on Public Health.

Folks, some of you may be aware of the investment that Microsoft is making in redesigning how we interface with computers, in particular the investment we are making in Surface Computing. You may also have noticed an article in The Age earlier this week, mentioning that the first of these devices have landed in Australia for further development.

The impact of Surface Computing in health will be enormous. The potential to redesign, how we collaborate around data, how we analyse it and even the kinds of patient charts and 'visual EMR's' that are likely to emerge, are genuinely exciting.

For more information on Surface Computing see our Surface Computing websites. You may also want to watch the following VIDEO CLIP from Dr Bill Crounse's Blog, which gives you great insight into early experimentation with Surface Computing in Health.

Dr Crounse is our Senior Director  for World Wide Health based in Redmond. You may want to consider subscribing to his Blog. It is a wonderful source of information on cutting edge innovation in health (inside and outside Microsoft) and provides an insight into innovation that our Customers and Partners around the world are achieving.

Sepsis (sometimes called septicaemia) is a major cause of death in our hospital system. The sad fact is that many cases of sepsis are not picked up early enough to prevent the loss of life and the expense of admissions to intensive care. Some of you may have learned about a Sepsis Screening and Intervention Tool built by Accent on Integration which was featured on Dr Bill Crounse's HealthBlog in April.

Accent on Integration are looking for Microsoft Partners in Australia to go to market with. If you are interested in the technology they have developed, please let me know (ddembo@microsoft.com). There is a great video on Dr Crounse's HealthBlog which is worth watching if you have not seen it already. Direct link:  http://blogs.msdn.com/healthblog/archive/2008/04/02/patient-safety-screening-tool-for-sepsis-new-video.aspx

One of Microsoft's Healthcare Partners, iClinix, was featured last night on the ABC's "The New Inventors" program.

iClinix have developed a Clinical Hand Over Tasks Management System on our platform, to redress one of the key areas in Health where Adverse Events (errors) occur. It is fantastic to see more solutions that are designed by clinicians for clinicians to improve patient care. iClinix have done extensive trails in the Hunter region and have ensured that the solution integrates seamlessly with the Specialist Medical Record.

You can view an excerpt from the program on the following link: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s2324907.htm

You can also learn more about the iClinix product (called THOMM) on their website or the following link: http://www.iclinix.com.au/Downloads/THOMM%20Brochure%20Low%20Res.pdf

Folks, for those of you who are not already across this, the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) has been doing an extensive review of the Privacy Act to make sure it addresses advances in technology, communications and industry in general. This week the ALRC released their final report which you can access on the following link: http://www.privacy.gov.au/act/alrc/index.html

Health Privacy is specifically called out as needing its own Privacy Regulations. Chapter 8 of the report deals with the Health specific issues. http://www.privacy.gov.au/publications/alrc280207.html

You can also view HISA's comments on the ALRC Report on David More's blog: http://aushealthit.blogspot.com/2008/08/hisa-comments-on-law-reform-commission.html

There are a number of ways in which Microsoft can add value to the solutions you develop for Health & Social Service customers.

A number of these are mentioned in a great promotional video from one of our Partners, Kronos. There are two in particular that I wanted to emphasise and they are the reason for me blogging the video link.

One, allowing you to extend the functionality of your solutions by embedding more of our product capabilities (in this case BI/Reporting) and two, allowing you to develop the capabilities with less time, human and financial investment. 

Healthcare organisations are under growing pressure (and incentives) to build transparency into the output and outcome of their healthcare expenditure (traditionally Health systems have only been able to measure what they spend on healthcare delivery, not what outcomes they are able to purchase/achieve for that expenditure). The need for BI/Reporting tools (stand alone or embedded in your products) will continue to grow with this need for greater transparency in Health.

Kronos have leveraged the SQL Reporting Services, in SQL Server to extend the service they offer their customers. By partnering with us, Kronos have taken advantage of the benefits of using commodities building blocks in reducing their costs and time to market in doing so.

The 4 minute video can be found at:

http://mfile.akamai.com/6711/wmv/kronos.download.akamai.com/6711/Kronos_Partner_Video.wmv

For those of you considering leveraging SQL Reporting Services, you may want to consider the extended functionality of Performance Point Server too. Our BI range of solutions can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/bi/

If you wanted any proof that rugged mobile devices can survive in the hands of our Healthcare Workforce, take a look at this video from Intermec.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB7ihMcRH_k

Folks, this blog is a little left field, but for our Mobility Partners selling into Health, here is a simple concept that nurses seem to be jumping at. The Nurses Joey is a pouch for all the tools nurses need to have on them during a shift, including their PDA/Smart Device ....

http://www.nursesheart.com.au/

Two weeks ago we held the 2008 HealthVault Solutions conference in Washington for the large number of HealthVault Partners already building solutions around the platform. The presentations from that event are now available on our HealthVault Developer Centre, but here is the direct link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/healthvault/cc627280.aspx

The agenda from the conference can be found at the following link: http://www.healthvault.com/docs/healthvault_agenda_3-25_r2.pdf