Microsoft is to partner with the US Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) to launch an interactive Health User Group for Europe Middle East and Africa.
The EMEA HUG will follow Microsoft’s US HUG which has been successfully running for many years and now counts 4,200 members, including 28 corporate members.
Elizabeth Bielby, Microsoft’s head of health EMEA, told E-Health Europe that Microosft’s US HUG was “a strong but very US-centric community”. She added: “EMEA has a preference for a local community and body that will be better able to generate local contacts and will better reflect EMEA interests.”
She said that the EMEA health IT industry was significantly different from its US counterparts, with different priorities and interests. “There is a lot more interest in interoperability and information exchange and issues of identity and security”.
The new European site for EMEA HUG will launch in January 2008, beginning with interactive features such as webinars. The initial launch will be as an online community offered to Microsoft customers and HIMSS Europe members.
Bielby told EHE that once Microsoft had successfully got the HUG up and running the aim will be to hand over running of the group to HIMSS Europe, and tie in an event with the annual HIMSS Europe World of Health IT conference.
In a press statement Tim Smokoff, managing director for the worldwide public sector team at Microsoft, said: “Expanding MS-HUG to Europe, the Middle East and Africa provides an expanded forum for sharing best practices and learnings from our own experience, as well as experiences of our customers and partners.”
The MS-HUG EMEA community will be hosted within the existing site www.mshug.org and will include content, discussion groups and webinars from thought leaders in healthcare and IT industries.