14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has kicked off a new online show placed at the intersection of heath and information technology, as the company put it. Microsoft Health Tech Today is an online destination for organizations involved in the health care industry, designed to offer insights into how technology in general, and software products in particular, can contribute to improving health worldwide. There are already no less than six videos offered to visitors as a part of the online series. According to Microsoft, the software solutions, highlighted via the Microsoft Health Tech Today, will provide information on proven products and scenarios capable of catalyzing evolution for health care not just for clinicians but also for patients.
Hosted by Bill Crounse, M.D., senior director of Worldwide Health for Microsoft, the show is focused on health IT, and will feature a roster of personalities in the healthcare world. The most prominent figure that is featured on Microsoft Health Tech Today is Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The Redmond company noted that Tutu had been tapped for an insight into e-health, and how the marriage between information technologies and medicine can be critical to dealing with key issues in global healthcare.
“Since coming to Microsoft, it’s been my desire to do something more to disseminate information showing how information technology is transforming health and healthcare, and now is the time,” Crounse noted. “With the worldwide interest in health and particularly health IT, we want to give people a forum to talk about how important IT is to the industry, and how it can improve the cost and quality of care as well as the satisfaction of those providing and receiving care. ‘Health Tech Today’ gives the industry a voice that it currently does not have on the Web.”
Over the past few years, Microsoft has continually increased its focus on the healthcare industry with a variety of software offerings. End users have Microsoft HealthVault, a Cloud application offered for free, that allows both patients and doctors to upload and store clinical data online and access it, independent of their location or device, via the web. In addition, health organizations can take advantage of Microsoft Amalga, a family of products including Amalga Life Sciences and Amalga Hospital Information System, which are designed to provide a viable alternative to information siloed in disparate IT systems.
Finally, organizations involved in healthcare still have to run a business, and Health Tech Today will bring sustainable solutions into the spotlight, advertising not only enhanced patient services, but also efficiency boosts in concert with cost reductions.