Microsoft targeting hospital IT with Azyxxi

The name reads like a sneeze. It's pronounced ah-zic-see, and it's Microsoft's most direct attack yet on the hospital automation market.

The idea, says sales director Tom Poole, is to store all types of medical data -- registration data, lab results, pharmacy orders, all types of scans -- then deliver that in whatever form an emergency room physician might need.

The underlying technology is 10 years old and was the primary source of data across the MedStar Health system in Washington D.C. when Microsoft acquired it in July, 2006.

Since there's already a medical software outfit called MedStar, and the founders were calling their system Insight, another generic name, Microsoft went with an imaginary word it could easily trademark.

Right now there is little Microsoft branding across the Azyxxi Web site, but that's going to change after Microsoft formally announces its strategies later this week, Poole says.

Meanwhile Microsoft has been announceing "early adopters" like New York Presbyterian Hospital, Johns Hopkins Health System, and Novant Health Systems in Winston-Salem, NC, whose success it hopes will spread the good word.

Tom Todd Taylor carries the title physician-executive, and says he had access to six clinical systems with eight different passwords when he retired from practice a year ago.

"There are many silos of data," he says. "The systems aren’t interoperable. There are standards efforts ongoing, but there are multiple versons of the standards. It will take several years to get true interoperability based on standards. Plus there is paper.

"What Azyxxi does is utilize standards when available, but it’s not limited by them. So we can integrate information others can’t because they’re limited to standards.

"We take all the information, break it down into small parts, store it, and then  put it together and present it in a usable format to the clinician."

Despite all the work of the last 10 years, Poole says "Only 10% of physicians have automation today." This means the market is ready to break-out from the early adopters into broad acceptance.

Microsoft believes its timing here is right, and the market is ready to say gesundheit to Azyxxi.

Are you?