REDMOND, WA – Now that Microsoft has purchased clinical IT from the Washington DC-based physicians that developed it, Peter Neupert, Microsoft’s vice president of health strategy, is getting down to the business of spreading it to hospitals across the country.

There’s plenty to do. For starters, Neupert and his team have to integrate Microsoft with the 40-plus members of the Washington Hospital Center team who will continue to work on the technology, called Azyxxi (pronounced ah-zik-see). They also need to figure how to commercialize the software, create a brand and build a sales team — and all the attendant details.

Analyst Wes Rishel and Thomas Handler, MD, believe Microsoft has barriers to overcome on the healthcare front.

Microsoft an‑ nounced in late July it would acquire the Azyxxi software from Washington D.C.-based MedStar Health for an undisclosed price.

“Microsoft faces many challenges with Azyxxi,” they write in a research note following the Microsoft announcement. “The current package is not a complete product for business intelligence or regional health information organizations. Microsoft will need to scramble to establish a clear product definition and respond to rapidly evolving requirements.”

The technology was first deployed in 1996 in the emergency department of Washington Hospital Center, one of MedStar’s hospitals and one of the busiest hospitals in the country.

Craig Feied, MD, Mark Smith, MD, and Fidrik Iskandar used Microsoft development tools to develop the software, which pulls together patient data from hundreds of sources and makes them instantly available at the point of care.

Feied and the others, using the Microsoft .NET Framework Microsoft’s SQL server, “were pushing the envelope,” Neupert said. Over the years, they garnered the attention of Microsoft engineers, who were fascinated by what the physicians were able to do.

When Neupert convinced the top brass at Microsoft that it was time for the company to move into healthcare, the Azyxxi software came immediately to mind. Microsoft is acquiring Azyxxi from two technology companies, Datomics Licensing and General Datomics, founded by Azyxxi’s creators.

Feied could not be happier.

“I’ve spent my entire career to help clinicians better care for patients,” he said. “We’ve had incredible success.”

“Azyxxi is really about adding value,” Feied said. “What it really does is provide a health intelligence engine.” The engine brings disparate types of data together, and it’s a zero-downtime platform.

“It’s always on,” Feied said, “and it provides instant data all the time, anywhere.”

Clinicians at other hospitals were eager to tap into that success, Feied said, but until now he and his team had no way to make the software available to them.

Other potential buyers courted MedStar, Feied acknowledged. In his view, Microsoft is the ideal partner.

 “Microsoft shares the vision,” he said. “This is a way to do something very, very good.”

Industry analysts took a wait-and-see stance on Microsoft’s foray into the healthcare market, noting the software has been tested outside MedStar hospitals. But Neupert and Feied dismiss the skepticism, and suggest the market is ripe for Azyxxi,  “There is in fact nothing that meets clinical needs today,” said Feied. That’s why he and his colleagues had to create their own.
“There was nothing at all that even came close.”