SEATTLE, June 4, 2003 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the forthcoming availability of Microsoft® BizTalk®
Accelerator for Healthcare, which includes all the functionality of BizTalk Accelerator for HIPAA and adds support for Health Level Seven (HL7) Messaging, a standard for electronic data exchange in hospitals and other healthcare environments. Microsoft made the announcement today at the HIPAA Summit West in Seattle, a forum on healthcare privacy, confidentiality, data security and compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996.
The significance of HL7 has been noted by Wes Rishel, chair of HL7, the organization that guides HL7 development, and research director at Gartner Inc.:
“Universal adoption of open industry standards such as XML and HL7 will be essential elements in creating the much-needed national healthcare information infrastructure. HL7 makes it easier and less costly to create electronic medical records from disparate sources, which in turn will boost efforts to improve patient safety through the elimination of medical errors.”
The BizTalk Accelerator for Healthcare will serve as an important integration tool for healthcare organizations to extend the life of legacy systems while helping healthcare organizations comply with the electronic transaction set provisions of HIPAA. The BizTalk Accelerator for Healthcare provides the following:
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Prebuilt support for HL7 messaging standards including versions 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.3.1, 2.4, 2.XML and version 3.0 ready
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Prebuilt support for the 12 HIPAA-mandated transactions and future-mandated transaction support for Health Care Claim Request (277) and Additional Information to Support a Health Care Claim or Encounter (275), which enable providers to electronically attach reports, results and process notes with each electronic claim and allow payers to receive and process these claims
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Integrated Office 2003 InfoPath™
information-gathering program forms and templates for presenting data in an easy-to-use way. The combination of BizTalk Server 2004, the Accelerator for Healthcare and InfoPath empowers healthcare knowledge workers to automate key business processes such as claims submission and clinical data management. -
Comprehensive tools for deployment and ongoing management including a system-monitoring dashboard, an integration management console and message repair capabilities
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Rapidly available schema updates when changes are made by the government and/or standards bodies
BizTalk Server — Connecting People, Information, Processes
BizTalk Accelerator for Healthcare is designed to work with BizTalk Server 2004, which is the foundation for Microsofts new business integration model code-named
“Jupiter.” BizTalk Server 2004 will enable customers to reduce the complexity and cost of connecting information, people and processes both within and across their organizational boundaries through manageable business processes. Built on the Microsoft .NET Framework and integrated with the Microsoft Office System and Visual Studio®
.NET, BizTalk Accelerator for Healthcare ensures that the unique needs of the information technology professional, information worker and developer are addressed for increased efficiency and productivity.
“BizTalk Server 2004 provides a powerful orchestration hub for business processes,”
said David Lubinski, general manager of the Healthcare Industry Solutions Group at Microsoft.
“In the same way that BizTalk Accelerator for HIPAA brought significant efficiencies to HIPAA-compliance efforts, we believe the BizTalk Accelerator for Healthcare is going to help healthcare organizations reduce the complexity and cost of connecting people, information, applications and business processes within the enterprise. The BizTalk Accelerator for Healthcare makes it easier to extend this powerful integration platform to HL7 solutions.”
HIPAA is part of a broader initiative by the U.S. government to bring open standards for data description and exchange to a healthcare industry that has traditionally been hampered by an infrastructure comprising disparate systems, which makes it difficult for them to share data with one another. In a related move, the U.S. Health and Human Services, Defense and Veterans Affairs departments recently announced that all federal agencies will adopt HL7 messaging standards to ensure that each agency can share information that will improve coordinated care for patients, such as entries of orders, scheduling appointments and tests, and better coordination of the admittance, discharge and transfer of patients.
Microsoft is currently working with systems integrators and healthcare application vendors including Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, EDS, G.A. Sullivan, Sierra Systems Group Inc., Extreme Logic Inc., Washington Publishing Co., MidTech Partners Inc., InterKnowlogy LLC and Quality Care Solutions Inc. (QCSI).
Creating Healthcare Without Boundaries
BizTalk Accelerator for Healthcare is part of Microsofts commitment to creating Healthcare Without Boundaries, an initiative based on using Microsoft technology and open industry standards to help organizations create seamless information infrastructures so healthcare data can be more securely shared across platforms and organizations.
About Health Level Seven
Founded in 1987, Health Level Seven Inc. ( http://www.hl7.org/ ) is a not-for-profit, ANSI-accredited standards developing organization dedicated to providing a comprehensive
framework and related standards for the exchange, integration, sharing and retrieval of electronic health information that supports clinical practice and the management, delivery and evaluation of health services. The federal government has recently adopted HL7 messaging standards as part of the Presidents eGov initiatives (see separate press release at http://www.hl7.org/ ). HL7s 2,000 members represent over 500 corporate members, including 90 percent of the largest information systems vendors serving healthcare.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software any time, any place and on any device.
Microsoft, BizTalk, InfoPath and Visual Studio are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
For more information on Microsoft Healthcare:
http://www.microsoft.com/healthcare/
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