The Microsoft cloud story is out – We’re All In
Often times we get driven by acronyms such as ones you are probably being bombarded with on daily basis. SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. These acronyms provide a practical view and ‘How To’ steps to help those of us trying to figure out how to plug into The Cloud and add value to individuals, organizations, or government agencies. After all, clouds are what their name implies, fluffy, high in the sky, wet, with elastic shapes, etc. Synthesizing the cloud to three major categories was no easy task. However, we should not lose sight of the ecosystem and the broader value and opportunities that cloud computing is making available to us.
On Thursday this week, our CEO, Steve Ballmer, delivered a great speech to University of Washington computer-science students outlining the five dimensions that define the way people use and realize value in the cloud:
· The cloud creates opportunities and responsibilities
· The cloud learns and helps you learn, decide and take action
· The cloud enhances your social and professional interactions
· The cloud wants smarter devices
· The cloud drives server advances that drive the cloud
At HIMSS earlier this week, I met with several partners who have or are already building innovative health solutions using the Microsoft cloud platform and capabilities such as Azure, SharePoint, Bing, etc. One of these solutions that is making an impressive and highly disruptive use of Microsoft Surface and cloud computing platform is Jardogs LLC with its advanced kiosk and clinical concierge solutions. In the Clinical Documentation Solution Accelerator demo that we were showcasing at the Microsoft Connected Health Platform station, we had a real time connection to an Azure based drug reference database provided by our partner First DataBank, and a real time connection to a cloud based web service for terminology translation provided by our partner Health Language, Inc. Both showing the enhanced user experience, patient safety, efficiency, and at the same time providing clinical documentation capabilities that enable greater secondary uses of data with encoded clinical information for improved research, or decision making. The Clinical Documentation Solution Accelerator will be released as a Connected Health Platform offering in early April 2010. You can access all Connected Health Platform offerings including guidance, tools and solution accelerators from the Health ICT Resource Center site https://www.microsoft.com/HealthICT.
You can watch Steve Ballmer’s video speech at the University of Washington here.
teddy bachour
senior industry technology strategist, ww health