Microsoft and GE Partner On Healthcare

theodp writes "Microsoft and General Electric are forming an as-yet-unnamed new health-care technology company. Based near Microsoft's Redmond headquarters, the company will be established next year with about 750 employees drawn from GE, Microsoft and elsewhere. 'High-quality, affordable healthcare is one of the biggest challenges facing every nation, but it's also an area where technology can make a huge difference,' said Steve Ballmer. 'Combining Microsoft's open, interoperable health platforms and software expertise with GE's experience and healthcare solutions will create exciting opportunities for patients and healthcare providers alike. Working together, GE and Microsoft can help make healthcare systems more intelligent and cost efficient while improving patient care.' Has someone been watching those iPad Healthcare case study videos?"

Comments

Already some huge sunk costs

[squidflakes]

Hummm, I wonder what's going to happen to all those instances of the PACS Centricity system that GE has deployed. They are all based on a large Sun box, usually a V880, running Solaris and Informix. The systems weren't known for getting along with much else, being that all of the software used to fetch the diagnostic images from the various modalities (PET, CT, X-RAY, etc) was proprietary to GE. Hell, most of their CT machines that were network enabled didn't even support DHCP.

If that whole mess needs to be ported to an MS platform and some version of MSSQL, me thinks that some PACS engineers with Windows and Solaris experience are about to see a couple of very very rich years. I also have a feeling that Siemens' competing product is going to see a boost when the hospital administrators get an estimate of what all that Windows licensing is going to cost, and how many more IT people they are going to have to hire to support it.

Oh god, and if they suddenly want the PACS system to be AD integrated...

Watching Apple?

[kervin]

Has someone been watching those iPad Healthcare case study videos?

Um, no. Someone has been producing actual healthcare products.

The PHR space is going to explode I believe as people start to shop around for affordable healthcare. This is one area I see where a small amount of technology can help the lives of millions of people. No more $100 xrays at every dentist you visit. Expensive diagnostics follow you around as long as they're valid. Less lost records and information 'silos' between doctors and labs.

This is one product I really hope Microsoft succeeds in.

Re:Pipe dream

[ScrewMaster]

In the US, the same ones that run things like the TSA.

That, actually, is the crux of the matter. Any discussion of whether socialized medicine is "better" or "worse" than private insurance must take into account the relative trustworthiness of a given country's bureaucracy. Ours has proven itself, time and time again, that it cannot be trusted with our money. Neither, unfortunately, can our private insurers, which leaves us in something of a bind. The solution to such problems has traditionally been heavily-regulated private-sector organizations providing the actual service, with the government making damn sure they do it right. The heavily corporatist leanings of our current regime makes that unworkable, and the idea of giving those 535 sociopaths collectively known as "Congress" complete control over our health care is not a viable solution here either. That should scare anyone who is paying attention to what the United States Federal Government has become, that is, a danger to itself and everyone subject to it.

When you get right down to cases, insurance of any kind is fundamentally socialist in nature. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the idea of many paying into the kitty, and some withdrawing in time of need. A number of very large corporations self-insure their employees: that can work out much better than private insurance. In any event, the issue is primarily one of administration: Germany, for example, does very well with socialized medicine because they have a fundamentally more trustworthy bureaucratic setup than the United States has ever had. Consequently, socializing our medical system, especially the way Obama wants to do it, is probably doomed to failure. Even if it proves effective, odds are it will be so expensive that we'll go broke trying to maintain it.