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Partnering to reimagine better experiences and better care for patients

Today, Microsoft is pleased to announce the general availability of Microsoft Cloud for HealthcareMicrosoft Cloud for Healthcare provides trusted and integrated capabilities that deliver automation and efficiency on high-value workflows as well as deep data analysis functionality for both structured and unstructured data, that enable customers to turn insight into action. Our extensive partner ecosystem broadens the value of the platform with additional solutions to address the most urgent challenges the healthcare industry is facing today.

Microsoft partners are helping health systems and clinicians create a connected care experience for their employees, patients, and communities while extending the value of their existing Microsoft investments. 

Enhance patient engagement

Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare is helping transform how providers and their care teams engage patients for improved, personalized experiences—including virtual health—and helping them gain operational efficiencies that lower the cost of care.

Allscripts FollowMyHealth® is a mobile-first and enterprise patient engagement platform that helps providers improve patient engagement by creating a unified patient experience, meeting patients where they are, and accelerating return on investment (ROI). Built natively on Microsoft Azure on Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, FollowMyHealth makes it easy for patients to stay connected across the care continuum and access a single point of data regardless of an individual provider’s Electronic Health Record (EHR).

“The COVID-19 pandemic will forever change how healthcare is delivered, and provider organizations around the world must ensure they are powered by innovative, interoperable, comprehensive and lower-cost IT solutions that meet the demands of our new normal.” Paul Black, Allscripts Chief Executive Officer.

Now more than ever, providers need to unify the patient experience and deliver a cost-effective and robust patient engagement strategy. From telehealth to a comprehensive patient portal with mobile outreach, FollowMyHealth displaces the cost of disparate point solutions while enabling providers to efficiently engage patients, deliver a better experience, and improve care outcomes. “Each step of the way, we’ve used FollowMyHealth to improve every patient engagement,” said Duane Donaway, Director of Information Systems, Hendrick Health System. “Patients leave in better health than when they arrived, plus they’re more informed and empowered to maintain their own health.”

Another partner, Avtex, was the first Microsoft partner to deploy Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and use their expertise to help providers deliver personalized care. Providers can now consolidate and unify their patient data—from multiple on-premises and cloud-based systems—into a single view and enrich it with Avtex IP, built on Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, to create a 360-degree-view of the patient.

Avtex innovation with Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare also helped providers use their patient data and insights to recover from the impacts of COVID-19. They observed patients were not just social distancing but medical distancing as well, by having elective procedures canceled or deferred. Building on the combination of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare and their expertise in patient experience, Avtex created a Patient Reactivation Program that enables providers to use the 360-degree-view of their patients and create targeted, personalized marketing campaigns for patients who canceled or deferred elective procedures. The results accelerate patients’ return to healthcare and health systems’ financial recovery. Avtex has partnered with Mary Washington Healthcare to rapidly deploy the solution. “The Patient Reactivation Program can help providers achieve a 30 to 40 percent improvement in digital reach and 3-6X improvement over traditional marketing campaigns,” said Mike Pietig, VP Healthcare Experience at Avtex.

Avtex has partnered with Mary Washington Healthcare to rapidly deploy the solution. “Mary Washington Healthcare is excited to be an early adopter of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. From early evaluation, this has the potential to be a market disrupter,” said Lisa E. Henry, MHA, Director Corporate Marketing and Communications, Mary Washington Healthcare. “It puts valuable, data-driven insights, decision making, and execution at our organization’s fingertips like no other. I am already imagining the many ways Mary Washington Healthcare can create customized patient experiences to improve the health of all those we serve.”

PopcornApps’ solution MobiCure enables digital transformation for providers with a focus on efficient, expeditious, and ergonomic process flow for patients and their care team. MobiCure is a modern, modular, and scalable solution for providers and facilitates an omnichannel patient experience on Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, including integration to patient records.

Microsoft Consulting Services has also partnered with healthcare providers impacted by COVID-19. In the early days of the pandemic, as every corner of society was scrambling to rethink patient engagement and reorganize how care teams needed to work, Microsoft Consulting Services helped business decision-makers in cities, state governmental agencies, hospitals, and healthcare providers develop unique COVID-19 response solutions.

Throughout 105 deployments since March 2020—61 in the United States and 44 internationally—Microsoft Consulting Services used a value-led ideation approach to extend the healthcare capabilities to provide robust solutions, such as COVID-19 test scheduling app, drive-through COVID testing app, Microsoft Healthcare Bot, virtual rounding, and hospital emergency response tools. This demonstrates the extensibility of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare solutions that benefit providers as our partners and ISVs bring specific solutions to their environments.

Empower health team collaboration

“Cognizant’s robust healthcare solutions and highly skilled team of experts will enable smooth implementation and accelerated adoption of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, transforming how providers and their care teams engage with patients.” Surya Gummadi, Senior Vice President and Head of Cognizant’s Healthcare Practice

Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare helps empower care teams with improved collaboration and communication, providing the right information at the point of care so clinicians can avoid searching for patient information or records in siloed data systems.

To address the challenge of physician burnout by eliminating administrative burden for providers, Chorus Software Solutions, one of our partners, has been innovating on Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. Their solution unlocks the intrinsic power of data without disruption to existing workflows so providers can focus on what is most important—their patients. Activating a modular, broad-based practice management platform, Chorus works to build a new future for healthcare organizations by reimagining clinical and operational workflows through its clearinghouse and revolutionary revenue cycle management (RCM) capabilities across eligibility, claims, remittance, and denial management processes in a unique partnership with Change Healthcare, and transforming the behavioral health space through their AutismCare platform.

As one of Microsoft’s Global System Integrators, Cognizant can help health systems and providers with functional implementation of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare and enable data interoperability across on-premises and cloud solutions, with enhanced data collection at point of service; an approach that is more reliable and eliminates delays, mistakes from duplicate data entry, and revisits. Enhanced governance and data management also ensures streamlined dataflow to perform business operations.

And because there is no ROI without adoption, Cognizant’s highly skilled teams partner with clients on the human side of technological change by enabling healthcare customers to realize the full business value of digital transformation through user adoption. The Organizational Change Management (OCM) team focuses on executive alignment, organizational change, readiness, training, ask the experts, internal communication, and user adoption.

In addition to Cognizant, global deployment of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare is delivered through our network of launch partner GSIs including Accenture, Avanade, DXC Technology, EY, HCL, KPMG, Mazik Global, Microsoft Consulting Services, and PWC. Our Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare Services Partners Capabilities Guide provides an overview of our GSI’s services, healthcare application, and platform solutions, and free customer workshops and offers.

HCL specializes in working with both enterprise and mid-market customers and has adopted a hybrid agile methodology for business-friendly implementation that is aligned to compliance needs. This includes defining functional and business requirements from users, performing dry-run and validated system testing, and system documentation.

“There has never been a better moment to innovate at the intersection of health care and digital technologies. HCL is thrilled to be strategically collaborating as part of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare to ensure better quality patient care, provider experience, and improving patient outcomes.” Shrikanth Shetty, EVP HLS, HCL technologies

HCL, with delivery centers in 45 countries, also provides services that focus on the people-side of digital transformation, where their approach puts the focus on people—defining what is new—and preparing both users and leadership. They emphasize executive sponsorship, training, measurement, and communication plans focusing on end-user input, frequent communication, and a variety of other tactics to encourage user engagement, adoption, and benefits realization.

Improve clinical and operational insights

“The Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare is a bold and definitive move to be embedded at the heart of interconnected, high performing healthcare. Cloud for Healthcare is the underlying fabric upon which we continue to innovate scalable solutions to the most complex aspects of health and social care.” Andy Truscott, Global Health Lead, Accenture

According to research compiled by Datavant, over 4 trillion gigabytes of healthcare data is generated annually and is projected to double every two years. Harnessing that breadth of data to drive actionable insights is at the heart of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. To help address those challenges, Accenture and Avanade enables health providers to deliver patient-centric experiences while delivering actionable insights with Accenture Healthcare on Azure, a modern data platform built on Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. The platform includes a breadth of applications and capabilities, including virtual health and patient insights to extend the inherent capabilities of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. Accenture’s Virtual Care offering is augmented by the power of Accenture Healthcare on Azure and combines highly secure Azure infrastructure, with data management providing rich insights using analytics, and engagement applications enabled by Microsoft Teams.

The solution empowers clinicians to make better clinical decisions when provided better insights, specific to the individual patient. Insights from the solution extend beyond direct care and include the administration and finance of that care. This helps providers identify opportunities to lower the cost of care, improve the patient experience at aggregate, and reduce risk to maintain operational compliance. Accenture has brought their differentiated solutions to the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. The Accenture Healthcare on the Azure platform is built using a health standards basis, embedded upon Microsoft hyperscale technologies. This means that data is available for use and reuse for direct patient care and secondary use to drive actionable insights.

Recognized in 2020 for a record 15th time, Microsoft named Accenture and Avanade as the Global Alliance SI Partner of the year in addition to the Microsoft Healthcare Partner of the Year. The group has 45,000 dedicated Microsoft solution experts around the world. “We are very proud of our partnership with Accenture and see the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare as a key opportunity for us to jointly help our customers transform and deliver improved patient outcomes,” said Deb Cupp, Corporate Vice President, WW Enterprise & Commercial Industries at Microsoft.

Due to rising cases of COVID-19 this year, elective surgeries took a major hit that has significantly impacted providers. Another of our partners, Innovaccer, has a solution that redefines surgery planning with meaningful insights that lead the way to optimized costs and improved outcomes. It enables the organization to quantify the impact of their pre-surgical optimization initiatives using the sensitivity analysis tool and ROI framework.

Today, Innovaccer is helping healthcare organizations and government agencies at more than 1,000 locations across the United States, with more than 37,000 providers using the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR)enabled Data Activation Platform for seamless collaboration and high-quality care delivery. By using the connected care framework, Innovaccer has unified records for more than 24 million members and helped healthcare organizations generate more than $600M in cost savings. 

Protect health data

Another services partner who can deploy Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare is Mazik Global. Mazik is also an ISV, having long served healthcare providers in midmarket and enterprise health organizations with the innovative MazikCare platform, built on Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. MazikCare offers reduced implementation time and accelerated ROI for providers starting on day one. Mazik Global supports customers in North America, Europe, Middle East, India, and Australia.

Mazik Global’s Data Fusion solution enables frictionless patient care through a unified data platform. With pre-built Integrations using HL7 integrations and FHIR standards, DataFusion makes clinical data from EHRs and other clinical systems actionable through Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare and allows access to data across healthcare organizations. By unifying information into a single portal, it helps providers and staff save time and take necessary actions faster. Using HL7 integrations and FHIR standards and built on Microsoft’s Healthcare Common Data Service (CDS), this fully HIPAA-compliant solution enables providers to synchronize both clinical and financial data while helping to meet security and compliance requirements.

DXC Technology’s Health360, powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Azure on Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, creates new healthcare systems of engagement by connecting data from multiple systems of record. It uses FHIR integration APIs to get information to/from EHRs, patient portals, and personal mobile devices, reducing the number of acute care visits, lowering healthcare costs, and improving patient outcomes. The solution is highly configurable and can be rapidly deployed and easily modified as business needs change for mid-market and enterprise health organizations globally.

Learn more and go further

If you would like to learn about the breadth of capabilities delivered through our network of Global System Integrators, check out our Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare Services Partners’ Capabilities Guide. It highlights services, solutions, global scale, and services profiles, including their ability to deploy Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare and tailor it to your unique business processes and environment and help you navigate the people-side of digital transformation. The guide also highlights more than 30 different workshops and other offers partners provide for free to help you get started.

You can also explore Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare further and Microsoft Partners can access Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare partner readiness and GTM assets on MPN Healthcare site.