Microsoft to offer healthcare software

Microsoft plans to offer healthcare software that is designed to retrieve and quickly display patient information from many sources, The New York Times reported yesterday.

The software will replace other programs that compile patient information, but can’t share the data. Many hospitals and clinics have different kinds of patient information in electronic form, but their different computer systems and software cannot share the data, which is the problem Microsoft’s new system addresses.

Microsoft is buying a software system called Azyxxi that will do the job. The software was first used at the Washington Hospital Center, where patients are treated faster because of it. “We weren’t doctor-poor or bed-poor,” Dr. Craig Fried, who designed the software, said. “We were information-poor.” Patients had been waiting because doctors were unable to find patient records and treatment history.

Microsoft hopes to meet the needs of doctors and hospitals, who hope to save money and improve care by handling patient records and tracking treatments electronically. It will be competing with other established suppliers of clinical information technology systems, including Cerner, Epic, G.E. and Ecylpsis.

High medication errors lead to call for electronic prescribing

Medication errors harm at least 1.5 million people every year and lead to $3.5 billion in additional medical costs, according to a report from the Institute of Medicine released on July 20.

The report calls for a series of steps to improve interaction between patients and healthcare organizations, including electronically written prescriptions by 2010.

The report found that 400,000 preventable drug-related injuries occur each year in hospitals, 800,000 in long term care settings and 530,000 among Medicare recipients in outpatient clinics.

The study finds that paper-based prescribing is associated with high error rates, so it promotes electronic prescribing, which eliminates hand writing errors and automatically alerts prescribers to possible interactions, allergies and other problems. It says that by 2008 all healthcare providers should make plans to write prescriptions electronically and by 2010 they should write them and pharmacies should be able to receive them.