Microsoft has purchased a health care software company named Azyxxi. The program was developed by a group of doctors involved with Medstar Health, a conglomerate of hospitals and other health care related companies in the Baltimore-Washington area. The purchase includes hiring 2 of the 3 doctors that designed the program and about 40 members of the development team.
The Azyxxi software retrieves and quickly displays patient information from many resources, including scanned images, EKGs, XRays, MRIs, etc. It is currently used in only a hand full of hospitals.
There is a lot of hype going around about how this purchase puts Microsoft in the applications business instead of the traditional infrastructure business like operating systems and databases that it currently associated with. I disagree. The Azyxxi software IS an infrastructure program. It simply ties data provided by other applications together. This will help the health care industry. One of the biggest issues in automating the health care industry is the incompatibility of data generated by a wide range of applications. I see Microsoft's interest in eliminating this barrier at a infrastructure level and not at a traditional application level.
If Microsoft can accomplish this goal it will not only greatly benefit health care in general but also keep the cash flowing in in the future. It will be interesting to watch.
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