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In
October 2007, Fortis Healthcare Ltd. (Fortis), a hospital chain
established by the promoters of Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited (RLL),
one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in India, entered
into an agreement with Microsoft India Corporation Pvt. Ltd.
(Microsoft) to set up solutions and services based on the
Microsoft platform. With this, the healthcare major in India
aimed to harness the power of technology to enhance productivity
and knowledge management activities at Fortis.
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Founded in 1996, Fortis had a presence in Delhi, Faridabad,
Noida, Jaipur, Amritsar, Srinagar, Mohali, and Raipur. As of 2008, it had 12
hospitals and planned to open 28 more by 2012.1
The healthcare chain contended that, in addition to increasing productivity and
enabling better patient care, the collaboration with Microsoft would allow it to
ramp up its presence throughout the country without having to worry about
software management.
Microsoft's solutions, based on the four-point vision of healthcare -
prevention, prediction, personalization, and participation, would help Fortis in
pooling its diverse processes online using Microsoft's Office and Exchange
applications.
This was expected to lead to better collaboration between the various employees
working at Fortis including the doctors and the nurses, as diverse data related
to patients gathered from various sources could be made readily available at the
point of care.
Not only would this boost productivity but it would also lead to better patient
care, according to Fortis. Commenting on the agreement with Microsoft, Shivinder
M Singh, Managing Director, Fortis, said, "Technology plays a vital role in
providing improved healthcare to patients. The association with Microsoft will
give us access to latest technologies for better collaboration amongst all our
staff to focus single-mindedly on enhanced patient care."2
Under the agreement, Microsoft would focus on developing projects, creating
documents, designing workflows, and enhancing performance management at Fortis.
The data obtained from Microsoft would be made available through an interface
called the SharePoint portal that could be accessed by the employees, doctors,
and nurses of Fortis and its various centers.
In fall 2007, John Brimm, a doctor with the Microsoft Healthcare Solution Group,
and his team had visited Fortis in order to communicate with the doctors. The
team displayed a solution termed as 'Azyxxi'.
The Azyxxi, now known as Microsoft Amalga, a part of the enterprise-class
software, the Unified Intelligence System, was built on Microsoft's technology
and offered inclusive solutions to meet the needs of healthcare enterprises.
Azyxxi was an innovative solution that enabled the hospitals to make available
all the data present in their administrative, financial, and clinical
departments. It offered hospitals the ability to combine, store, and access data
in significant ways without replacing the existing systems.
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