Hospital district connects systems and improves communications
01 September 2009
Developed economies are already finding it hard to maintain standards of healthcare within existing budgets. Now payers are facing a huge dose of extra cost as, building on advances in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, imaging, diagnostics and other fields, medical technology is delivering the potential for new treatments and diagnostics. eHealth – the application of information and communications technologies to the healthcare sector – stands out as a way to improve service and raise efficiency. As EU Health Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou noted in December 2008: “Investment in health pays future dividends.”
Program Fast Facts
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Situation
Current economies are pressured to maintain high standards of healthcare whilst remaining within increasingly tight budgets.
Solution
Microsoft’s BizTalk Server allows hospitals to collaborate efficiently in an integrated environment. This is a scalable solution that can bring improved patient care whilst saving costs.
Benefits
- Improved collaboration between hospitals
- Critical applications are integrated on the system, leading to better healthcare services.
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Critical applications are integrated into the system, leading to better healthcare services In Finland, the Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa (HUS) is the country’s largest healthcare organisation. With over 445,000 people using its services annually, it needs an outstanding information system to ensure the wellbeing of patients. In 2007, HUS upgraded its IT environment from a host of disparate software to Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Enterprise Edition. HUS hospitals can now collaborate efficiently in an environment that integrates different critical applications.
As a consequence, the people involved in the HUS network reckon that the efficiency of how the hospitals is dealing with patients has improved remarkably and the scalability of the solution means they continue to grow for the foreseeable future and this at a low cost.
To move away from today’s fragmented delivery system to tomorrow’s connected network, there is a need for technology_& infrastructure that allows data to flow freely throughout the system and be reused. This infrastructure must be flexible, to enable many different players across the ecosystem to do what they need to do; it must be interoperable, to leverage existing standards and infrastructure investments that work towards more unified ways of organizing and sharing data; it must be scalable, to adapt to the rate of medical and technology advances; and it must be secure and private, to foster consumer trust and responsibility.
Technology enables the reinvent healthcare. Such a venture requires strong partnership and broad collaboration with stakeholders. As a leader in the technology industry, Microsoft shares the vision of enabling the modernization of healthcare, with a focus on improving healthcare through improved usability.
More information on Hospital District of Helsinki (HUS):
- HUS covers a network of 23 hospitals that closely collaborate
- 445 000 people yearly use the services of the HUS, which represent 10% of Finland’s population
www.hus.fi