SAP, Accenture team up on health care software

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VistA Medical Imagining/ Records

Accenture is the former Andersen Consulting, of Arthur Andersen Enron shredding infamy. When I worked at Arthur Andersen, it had the largest health care IT consulting practice in the US, and wasn't married to any one vendor.

I worked as an Android, and later at my own and other IT consulting firms, at virtually all of the major US Medical Schools and the affiliated physician practices.

The hub of the Arthur Andersen health care practice was Seattle and hence it may have been natural for Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, to eventually become a director for Accenture. But it was unnatural for Accenture to become so Microsoft focused.

When you hire an IT consultant you should expect independence and objectivity. If a Microsoft solution is best of breed you want to know that. If not, you want Accenture to tell you about SAP, IDX, whatever solutions. And of course you want to know if inhouse development is preferable.

SAP like Citrix was founded by IBMers and SOA - Service Oriented Architecture is the mantra of these spin offs. SAP partnered with Microsoft to implement the SAP payroll system in Washington State. Citrix also partnered with Microsoft to help with I think virtualization. In any case, VMware, the long praised by ZDNet - but we readers only recently caught on - promises huge benefits for the health care industry.

Consider a top notch Medical Imaging system like perhaps the Veteran Administration's VistA. This software was funded by the US government, uses MUMPs (Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System) which was adopted as the language-of-choice for many healthcare and financial information systems/databases. But MUMPs is not taught in school. It is not Java, though there are conversion programs. The showcase for the technology is the Veterans Administation's VistA, an open source success, that recently was recognized with an award by Harvard.

It is not by accident that Massachusetts remains Microsoft's most troublesome state. Its success with open source is changing all of IT.

The article indicates to me, that Accenture, post Ballmer on board, returns to values important at the old pre Enron Arthur Andersen, involving independence and objectivity. I suspect the Ah Hix Zee purchase from Georgetown University physicians and the new Microsoft HealthCare division, plus Cherrel Scott (formerly of Group Health Cooperative) now chief operating officer of Gates Foundation, and the Gates former directorship and current ownership of Drugstore.com all related. The Gates friend, Buffet's company providing liablity insurance for physicans also so.

Assuming no one vendor believes it has a right to 100 percent of the healthcare software market, there will be great efficiences.

For example, VistA medical imaging/ records could be gained at the most modist of physician practices by simply accessing a virtualized desktop on a UMASS server. The virtualized desktop (using VMware as the model) is automatically a NetMeeting and the physcian and Radiologist and Ultrasound specialist and who ever can explore together. Its a killer web service.

It is my hope that the imaging techology the Gates foundation funds at the University of Washington will be available to Open Source communities like that the VA has supported with VistA.

Frank L. Mighetto
Masters of Healthcare Administration
University of Washington

Posted by: mighetto   Posted on: 09/20/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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