Microsoft Connected Health Platform Virtual Lab and Demo system
One of the priority areas we’ve been heavily focusing on lately is around optimizing information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure investments for health organizations. Optimizing ICT is enabled through the Connected Health Platform (CHP) offerings including a broad collection of guidance, tools, and solution accelerators available to you on the Health ICT Resource Center at https://www.microsoft.com/HealthICT. This can help ICT Departments in health organizations build optimized infrastructure and platform capabilities and services that leverage existing investments as a foundation to support meaningful use of ICT. More on Optimizing ICT and the new offerings around Optimized Desktops and Devices, Optimized Server and Datacenter, Security and Compliance, and Health Integration and Interoperability in future posts. What I would like to highlight on this post is the new availability of a virtual environment that you can access to learn about and, if needed, to demo many of the CHP solution accelerators we have available today.
The CHP collaboration solution accelerators provide a starting point to address common collaboration requirements in healthcare organizations. The virtual lab environment, that you can access from the Microsoft Public Sector Online Demo/Labs site at https://microsoftpsdemos.com/, contains the CHP solution accelerators listed below. The solution accelerators software, administrators guide, release notes and other supporting information can be downloaded from the Health ICT Resource Center referenced above:
Collaboration Fundamentals provides on-demand collaborative workspaces, discussion forums and a people directory.
Electronic Forms provides Microsoft Office InfoPath® 2007 building blocks to enable form designers to assemble electronic forms rapidly.
Managing Meetings provides a shared workspace where meeting attendees or committee members can share agendas, papers, presentations and actions.
Policies and Procedures provides a central location to publish, maintain and discover policy and guideline information.
Scorecards provides guidance on configuring a management dashboard to track organizational metrics.
Template Gallery provides a central location for users to publish, discover, rate and discuss document templates, spreadsheet templates and email templates.
For each of these solution accelerators, two scripts are provided. The “Level 100” script is for someone who needs to demonstrate the solution accelerator functionality. The “Level 200” script supplements the demonstration with additional technical information for users who want to learn more about the supporting capabilities.
If you are accessing the Microsoft Public Sector Online Demo/Labs site for the first time, you may want to check the information below. This and additional support documentation is also available at the site online:
First time users need to run the Browser Setup Script on the Home page of the site to configure their Browser to use the RDP connection.
To run a demo on the Microsoft Public Sector Online Demo site, you can either run a demo on-demand or schedule a demo for a later time.
· To run a demo on-demand
o After logging into the Online Demo/Lab System (you can login either via Windows Live ID or Registered User ID)
o Click the Catalog Tab
o Select the Demo from the Solution Catalog to run
o Click Schedule on the right hand side
o Select Now for Time, your local Time-Zone, and Duration to run the demo/lab, then click Submit
o The demo/lab will take 1-2 minutes to start up and then you will see the status of the demo/lab change to Running
o When the demo/lab is running, you will see a link under the Remote Workspaces at the bottom of the page
o Click the link in the Remote Workspaces to connect to the Online demo/lab Image to start the demo
o When completed with the demo/lab, just logout of the remote connection.
· To schedule a demo for later time
o After logging into the Online Demo/Lab System (you can login either via Windows Live ID or Registered User ID)
o Click the Catalog Tab
o Select the Demo/Lab from the Solution Catalog to run
o Click Schedule on the right hand side
o Select Date you want to run the demo/lab, then select the Time, your local Time-Zone, and Duration to run the demo/lab, then click Submit
o About 15 minutes before your schedule time, the demo/lab will pre-start for you.
o When the demo/lab is running, the user will see a link under the Remote Workspaces at the bottom of the page
o Click the link in the Remote Workspaces to connect to the Online demo/lab Image to start the demo
o When completed with the demo/lab, just logout of the remote connection.
teddy bachour
senior industry technology strategist, ww health