Today Steve Ballmer officially kicked off more than 225 events in the world wide launch of the next generation of infrastructure and application platform products including Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Server 2008, and SQL Server 2008.
I am truly excited about these products and particularly the kinds of applications, services and experiences that developers will be able to develop and deploy with these products. The theme around this launch is “Heroes Happen Here” which highlights the outstanding work that IT professionals, developers and partners do every day to create cutting-edge solutions and applications. I have already seen some of our early adopters create solutions that make the world a better place through healthcare and education.
I wanted to share one example of one of these early adopters. Only last week I had the chance to go on a college tour with my daughter. Seeing the kind of students, the education they get from the universities and the promise that these students have for the world at large, I thought I will highlight what is happening with Microsoft products at one school - Vanderbilt University, that has the ability to help save lives.
Severe sepsis is the tenth leading cause of death worldwide and costs hospitals over U.S. $16.7 billion each year. Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) decided to develop a technology-based patient surveillance tool to help its clinicians more effectively detect and manage sepsis. VUMC collaborated with the healthcare application developers at Accent on Integration to create a Web-based solution called the Patient Safety Screening Tool (PSST) for Sepsis. To optimize the solution, Accent on Integration used the enhanced Web technologies of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008, and Microsoft SQL Server 2005, along with Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 and the 2007 Office system. Accent on Integration maximized the dynamic new capabilities of .NET Framework 3.5 and IIS 7.0 to create a flexible, extensible solution for VUMC.
When I see our products being used in such environments to create such meaningful solutions, it really makes me and the rest of the team want to do more.
Namaste!
