With new products and acquisitions, Peter Neupert’s Health Solutions Group is working to bring medicine into the 21st century.
By Fred Albert
You can use the Internet to organize your finances, make travel arrangements, or even monitor the temperature of your home. But when it comes to managing your health care, the information superhighway is stuck in the breakdown lane. “Health isn’t in the Internet age yet,” acknowledged Peter Neupert, corporate vice president for the Health Solutions Group (HSG). “I can’t interact with my physician online. I can’t get data about myself online. I always have to fill in the same information over and over again. Aren’t there better ways to do this? We think there are.”
Neupert left Microsoft in 1998 after rising to the rank of vice president, News and Publishing, then rejoined the company two years ago to start HSG, a division dedicated to developing information systems in the health care sphere. Launched with a staff of five, the group now boasts some 225 employees working in both the enterprise and consumer sectors.
Although Microsoft has developed software infrastructure for partners in the health care field since the mid-1990s, Neupert’s group represents the company’s first major effort to originate health solutions. It’s a market that’s grossly underserved, yet still doesn’t have any dominant players, making it an ideal arena for Microsoft.
“Not many companies have such a huge global footprint and the resources to dedicate toward health,” said Tracey Ferriss, senior manager of marketing and communication for HSG. “The potential is great to make revenue, but also to really make a difference.”
While competitors often focus on the needs of a specific region, Microsoft is taking a global approach to health management. “The world is flat when it comes to health. The challenges are the same around the world,” said Davide Vigano, general manager of enterprise marketing for HSG. “It’s a perfect hard problem for Microsoft to solve. We’ve solved all the easy ones.”
One of the biggest challenges facing the health care industry is managing patient information. “An average hospital … has about 80 different applications … so every time you move from one department to another, you’re basically in a different company,” said Vigano. Last year HSG acquired Azyxxi, an enterprise solution developed by a team of doctors in a Washington, D.C., hospital. Azyxxi aggregates patient information from a variety of sources, allowing medical professionals to obtain a single view of a patient’s health data.In October, Microsoft purchased Global Care Solutions, a Bangkok-based company that specializes in enterprise solutions for hospitals. Their Health Information System, developed in tandem with Bumrungrad International Hospital, efficiently manages clinical workflow, billing, regulatory compliance, and medical records for some 1.2 million patients each year, while keeping wait time to an average of 17 minutes per patient. “That’s the Microsoft Office for health care: all you need, preintegrated,” observed Vigano. Neupert wants to market this information system to other hospitals around the world, and within a year hopes to integrate it with Azyxxi, creating a menu of features that hospitals can pick and choose from according to their needs.
Neupert isn’t overlooking the consumer in all this. In October he launched HealthVault, a platform designed to help people seek and collect health information and store it in one place. Incorporating Microsoft Live, MSN, and the health search engine Medstory acquired earlier this year, HealthVault addresses the needs of the “family health manager,” the individual, usually a woman, who researches and organizes health matters for her children, spouse, and parents.
“Consumers … are having to accept a lot more responsibility for their health decisions. It’s pretty overwhelming, and oftentimes they’re not really equipped with the information they need to make those decisions,” said Ferriss.HealthVault, now in beta, aims to help. It can store each family member’s health history and make it available to physicians or others when needed. Eventually it will allow users to upload information directly from personal health devices such as glucometers, sphygmomanometers, and peak flow meters.
Given the personal nature of such information, HSG took pains to guarantee privacy on HealthVault, consulting with advocacy groups, using an encrypted link, and deleting search logs after only 90 days. The privacy policy is clearly posted on the home page to assuage users, although it may take a physician’s endorsement to win over some. “If my doctor says to me, ‘Hey, I want you to use this,’ I’m going to trust it,” said Grad Conn, senior director of consumer product marketing for HSG.
Neupert and his group are working to earn the trust of those doctors. But they realize it could take time. “Health is a complex sector that moves slowly … from an innovation point of view,” Neupert said. “This is going to take time.”
