Microsoft announced Microsoft Amalga Unified Intelligence System (UIS) 2009, the next generation of the enterprise data aggregation platform.

The new platform enables hospitals to unlock patient data stored in a wide range of systems and make it easily accessible to every authorized member of the team inside and beyond the hospital — including the patient — to help them drive real-time improvements in the quality, safety and efficiency of care delivery.

With new features including Microsoft HealthVault connectivity, Amalga Web functionality, preconfigured add-on modules and better IT tools, Microsoft Amalga UIS 2009 allows health organizations to better leverage data assets and empower and improve the productivity of their staff. Amalga UIS 2009 helps all healthcare professionals — from administrators and clinicians to researchers — to make the most informed, timely decisions by giving them the right information at the right time.

By providing connectivity with HealthVault, Amalga UIS 2009 helps hospitals improve the patient experience and the efficiency of care delivery by capturing, organizing and presenting patient data throughout the care process, from patient preregistration to discharge and beyond. For example, once authorized by a patient, Amalga UIS 2009 can pull a patient’s medication lists, allergies and vital signs such as blood pressure and blood glucose from the patient’s HealthVault record into Amalga UIS 2009, saving time for the patient and improving the completeness and accuracy of patient information delivered to clinicians.

Also when authorized by the patient, Amalga UIS 2009 can push patient data generated at the hospital, including test results, medications and discharge summaries, to the patient’s HealthVault record via the ASTM Continuity of Care Record (CCR) industry-standard specification. The patient can then use and share this information, as desired, with other clinicians or caregivers. As a result, patients can play a more active role in managing their care together with providers and more easily involve family members in their care as well.

The new Amalga Web functionality enables clinicians to communicate and exchange authorized patient information generated at the hospital with affiliated referring physicians in the community or across the country. Amalga Web lets credentialed physicians access Amalga data remotely via a Web browser and save time and money by eliminating faxes, e-mails and phone calls.

With Amalga UIS 2009, Microsoft is introducing new extensions and modules. Amalga extensions are packaged pre-configurations that allow healthcare organizations to view data to address a specific business need. Amalga modules are commercially available add-on products that address a broad, complex business need. The new Amalga UIS 2009 modules are the following:

The Amalga UIS Quality Measures module is designed to help healthcare organizations track and comply with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) core measures, and thus avoid being penalized for noncompliance. The Quality Measures module captures data on all patients as they enter the hospital, determines whether a patient is a core measure candidate, and then enables the hospital to track and measure compliance in real time. As a result, healthcare organizations can drive change and promote compliance before a patient leaves the hospital, rather than after as so often happens.

The Amalga UIS Research Foundation module allows researchers to interactively explore clinical and life science data generated by multiple systems from a single location. The Research Foundation module provides a next-generation data repository, ontology management and a query environment for experimental and operational data. Using the Research Foundation module in concert with Amalga UIS 2009, research organizations are able to unite the diverse disciplines and methods with the investigators who will be empowered to discover and transform biological insight into clinical practice.

The Amalga UIS Medical Imaging module allows clinicians to unify medical images from all departments within and across multiple institutions and access them in one place with related clinical information. Clinicians can visualize images from multiple DICOM modalities such as CT, MR, US and X-ray. The Medical Imaging module uses server-side processing to facilitate faster delivery and minimize network utilization, providing clinicians with access throughout the enterprise. The storage layer supports centralization of the images or allows customers to leverage their existing storage infrastructure.

Amalga UIS 2009 also features new and improved visualization options with dashboard graphs, providing a simple real-time view of complex data such as patient flow and finances, and a completely redesigned user interface that incorporates the usability advances and look and feel of familiar Microsoft products.