iSoft announces new products at Medica

iSoft has launched two integrated care systems for the German market, based on the company’s new Lorenzo software.

The company has also announced that it plans to migrate all customers to Microsoft’s .Net platform in the near future, which will be a requirement for Lorenzo-based modules.

Both of the new products are the result of a co-operation between iSoft and Microsoft Germany. The product launches were announced at the annual Medica trade fair in Düsseldorf, Germany.

The first product is an electronic patient record for integrated care that is compatible with the German eFA standard.

The eFA standard is a national standard for electronic case records in Germany. It enables co-operating medical institutions to share data, while running a policy of strictly decentralised data storage.

The eFA standard was developed by a number of private hospital chains like Asklepios and technically specified by researchers of the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin.

Recently the German eFA project has gained international attention because several eFA components were successfully fed into profile development process at the international organisation Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE).

The second new product presented by iSoft for the German market at Medica, was a portal called iCS (iSoft collaboration suite). It aims at hospitals that want to give doctors in private practice access to patient data.

“Both eFA and iCS are based on the international Lorenzo software with its multi layer service oriented architecture,” said Peter Herrmann, managing director of iSoft for Central Europe.

The solutions, he said, were specifically adapted to the German market, very much like Lorenzo based solutions have to be adapted to national requirements in other countries, such as for the English National Health Service.

iSoft also announced plans to migrate all its customers existing iSoft solutions to Microsoft’s .NET platform in the near future in order to make the older systems compatible with new modules that are based on the Lorenzo software. This will apply to iSoft customers in Germany and internationally.

“The goal is to give users of our radiology or laboratory systems, or customers who use our hospital information systems, the possibility for a stepwise migration towards Lorenzo without forcing them to suddenly change their systems,” said Herrmann.

From a strategic point of view, there are two fields that iSoft is now focusing on. First, it will focus on migrating information systems for hospitals, radiologies and laboratories towards Microsoft’s .NET platform and, in the long run, towards the Lorenzo service oriented architecture.

Second, there is a range of entirely new products that are also based on Lorenzo technology, like iCS and eFA in Germany, or like the integrated care solutions that are planned for use by the NHS trusts in the National Programme of IT in the UK.

“In the UK we have started to be operational with Lorenzo in two trusts in the last two weeks,” said Gary Cohen, CEO of IBA Health, the Australian mother company of iSoft. These trusts, he said, were South Birmingham PCT and University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust.

Andrea Fiumicelli, chief operating officer of iSoft, said that the multi-layer service oriented architecture of Lorenzo made it an ideal tool, “to enable healthcare to leave the four walls of medical institutions”. At Medica he presented as an example a regional emergency care network that brings together hospitals, emergency cars and personal medical devices for individuals.

“Lorenzo provides the framework to acquire any healthcare related data from any source. It can be used by hospitals, regional networks and healthcare organisations alike and is fully compatible with existing IT solutions. We really think that this represents a breakthrough in terms of architectural design,” said Fiumicelli.