Azyxxi: Microsoft's Magic Word for Health Care

Azyxxi, it sounds like a fictional word, a magic word from a fairy tale, or the name of a wizardly librarian in some fantastic novel. While it is none of these the latter description is closest to the truth. Azyxxi is a librarian of sorts and it is also said to perform almost magical feats.

So what exactly is Azyxxi? It is Microsoft's new unified health enterprise system. It is an aggregator of financial, clinical, administrative and patient records and is rapidly becoming Microsoft's most well known foray into the field of electronic medical records (EMRs). If the facts match the PR it will put an amazing array of data at the fingertips of health care professionals, allowing them to access that data through computers, laptops, PDAs, tablets and other devices.

Sharon Linsenbach at E-Week takes a glance at things as Microsoft prepares its largest rollout of Azyxxi yet coming in early 2008:

St. Joseph Health System, a network of hospitals in the Southwest with nearly 20,000 employees, is moving over to Microsoft's Azyxxi unified health enterprise platform...

"With Azyxxi, all our physicians -- those in the hospitals, community-based and in group practices -- will have virtually instant access to a patient's health information, thereby increasing connectivity between providers and improving care for patients," Dr. Clyde Wesp, chief medical information officer for St. Joseph Health System, said in a statement.

By then end of 2009 the entire hospital network is slated to be finished. A multitude of physician's groups, fourteen acute care hospitals, and three home health agencies spread across California, Texas, and New Mexico will then be using the platform. They will be joining earlier adopters such as Johns Hopkins, New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Novant Health.

The news keeps getting brighter on the subject of EMRs. Stories like this one and the FCC's Telehealth initiative (see yesterday's post) keep cropping up. Each day, advances in information technology are implemented on a wider and wider scale. George Halvorson writes of a "perfect storm" in favor of health care reform; if current news items are any indication it would seem that storm is on the horizon.


SOURCE: "Hospital Network Adopts Microsoft Health Care Platform" 0/29/07
SOURCE: "Azyxxi- Official Site"
SOURCE: "Azyxxi- Wikipedia Entry"
photo courtesy of Chris Metcalf,, used under this Creative Commons license