Microsoft to quit HIS market

Microsoft is to stop selling its Amalga Hospital Information System to new customers, the company will also cease development of the Amalga HIS product family.

The company will instead focus its efforts on two platforms, the Amalga Unified Intelligence System for enterprise health customers; and the HealtVault personal health records platform for consumer health.

The company will instead focus resources on Amalga Unified Intelligence System (UIS), available globally, as the solution for health organizations worldwide.

In the UK, Milton Keynes Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is the launch customer for UIS, and is due to go live with the system this summer. A second Swiss UIS customer has also just signed.

Microsoft says that Amalga UIS is a highly flexible solution that enables healthcare organisations to reengineer workflows and get information to professionals when and where they need it. So far the system is in use at 125 hospitals.

The US technology giant says that when combined with Microsoft HealthVault, a Web-based personal health platform designed to put people in control of their health information, Amalga UIS supports consumer engagement and patient-provider connections.

Microsoft has invested heavily in its Health Solutions Group (HSG) in recent years, including a string of acquisitions, but says it will discontinue the sales and development of Amalga Hospital Information System (HIS), sold primarily in Asia Pacific.

The Amalga HIS product was acquired from Global Care Solutions in 2007, developed for healthcare systems in emerging economies. Microsoft has found it more difficult than anticipated to commoditise HIS technology, and found the procurement processes longer than expected.

In a statement the firm said: “Working with customers over the past three years, we’ve learned that an all-encompassing solution is not optimal for meeting the varied and dynamic needs of health organisations around the world. As a result, this approach is not well aligned to Microsoft’s broader health IT strategy moving forward.”

Microsoft says it will continue to support its customers’ use of Amalga HIS for five more years. “We are working with each Amalga HIS customer to address their short and longer-term needs – moving them forward to HIS version 6.0 or identifying partner solutions that, together with Amalga UIS, could meet their requirements.”