WHO'S INVOLVED

Partner Insights

"The Microsoft Health Common User Interface is a big step forward in the quality and safety of clinical user interface design. Quality user interface design contributes to patient safety and enhances the working environment of healthcare professionals. We are delighted to see Microsoft supporting this vital area of healthcare delivery and value the opportunity to share and exchange ideas in this field, which we are able to achieve through participation in Microsoft Health CUI."

Adam Towler - Bluewire Technologies Ltd

Bluewire Technologies Ltd have been making clinical medical software solutions for seven years. Always leading the adoption of new technologies and UI design ideas, their software was one of the first to use AJAX techniques (2001) and they invest heavily in mobile devices and Tablet PCs. Bluewire Technologies have always been led by healthcare professionals, who appreciate their fast and highly functional interfaces. Experienced clinicians are highly adept at thumbing through large volumes of disorganized paper case notes, and it was important to build on this. Bluewire Technologies succeeded in producing an interface, based on a familiar organizational structure, able to accommodate the full breadth of data contained in the notes. They combine best of breed technologies, including Tablet PCs and speech recognition to produce a product that leaves users feeling confident and comfortable. New users frequently respond to their interface with an instant 'Wow!'.

"Concentra has a particularly strong presence in healthcare having developed a number of complex and award winning applications for the NHS. As part of the design process, we focus heavily on usability, running usability labs, to ensure our software is intuitive and easy to use. The Microsoft Health CUI shares our objectives in reducing errors in the interpretation of data, training needs and improving efficiencies by saving users' time. Having a set of tools and guidelines not only drives consistency across our applications, but also helps our developers be more efficient, thus reducing costs for our clients."

Goetz Boue - Concentra

Concentra is a leader in advanced analytics and software development. They specialize in the design, development and support of innovative tools and solutions that help their clients increase performance, streamline operations and improve collaboration. Concentra's solutions are scalable, highly usable and designed for ongoing benefit realization. Their services consist of consulting, custom application development, information worker solutions using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, business intelligence, support and hosting.

"The EMIS Web User Interface is designed around Microsoft Health CUI standards for the display of clinical data, user interaction, consistent navigation and to promote clinical safety. EMIS believes that the evidence-based Microsoft Health CUI standards are a big step forward in the development of the next generation of EMRs, and are a key component in enhancing their safety."

Dr. Shaun O'Hanlon, Clinical Design Director - EMIS

EMIS is the largest supplier of EMR's to Primary Care practitioners in the UK. Over 39 million UK residents' current medical records are managed using EMIS systems. EMIS is currently deploying their next generation hosted EMR; EMIS Web. EMIS Web is designed to continue to support excellence in clinical care, be adaptable to individual clinician's workflows and also to facilitate care across the continuum through sophisticated record sharing agreements and patient consent model. EMIS Web is being used by Primary Care Clinicians (for example, GPs, Nurses), Community Practitioners (for example, District Nurses, Physiotherapists), special-interest GPs, A&E units and Out of Hours services to support patient care.

"We consider the adoption and implementation of Microsoft Health CUI components and guidelines to be essential to our strategy and fully support the work Microsoft are doing in this area. The focus on patient safety inherent within the Microsoft Health CUI guidance provides a structure for clinical applications that is compelling and applicable to other sectors, including Social Care. in4tek has already adopted not only the design guidance, but is actively incorporating the CUI Control Toolkit into our solution."

Tom Nawojczyk, Chief Executive - in4tek

in4tek's Paris product provides a single one stop solution for community health and social care and is widely implemented. Paris has already been adopted by Belfast, the largest health organization in Europe, to meet both their health and social care requirements. Paris is successfully deployed by Cardiff & Vale NHS Trust which is the largest NHS provider in Wales, as well as in Vancouver, one of the largest health authorities in Canada. Paris implementations in the UK include organizations as diverse as Torbay Care Trust, Cheshire County Council for Social Services, Cheshire PCTs for Child Health, Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead for Social Care, Orkney for Health and Social Care and both Leeds and Tees Mental Health Foundation Trusts via CSC and NHS CfH.

in4tek aim to produce solutions that are innovative and address the disparate demands of Child, Community and Mental Health organizations and the Adult and Child Social Care organizations with which they interact. Providing the end-user with the recognized best solution for presenting and manipulating client data is critical in meeting this goal.

With patient safety being the primary concern of many healthcare organizations, providing clinical applications with consistent data presentation format is essential. Vendors who provide these applications need to adopt a consistent data presentation format, as presented in the Microsoft Health CUI guidelines. The value added is not only for the application, but also for the healthcare organization, as well as for the patients. Hospitals can also adopt these guidelines for their internal applications, so that physicians and clinicians have a consistent view of the same data across all applications.

Healthcare organizations need to start at some place to improve patient safety and make patient care better and faster. Using Microsoft Health CUI guidelines is definitely a good start in this long journey."

Anand Gaddum MHA, Director of Healthcare Practice - iLink Systems

iLink Systems is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Their enterprise business solutions include PDLC, Enterprise Application Development, Data Management, Mobility, Collaboration & Communication, Portals & Enterprise Content Management, and Business Process and Integration Solutions.

Technologies that iLink Systems specializes in for their clients include .NET (WPF, WCF and WF), ASP.Net, HealthVault integration, Micorsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, SQL Server 2007 (OLAP, OLTP, Analysis Services), BizTalk, Javascript/AJAX, Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Microsoft Performance Point Server 2007, DotNetNuke, Microsoft Commerce Server, Windows Vista and Gadgets.

"Microsoft Health CUI is massively important for us as we pursue opportunities for Practice Based Commissioning using our cross-platform (clinical system platform) technologies. In situations where our software is typically used (for example, in emergencies away from the surgery, or in the event of a systems failure), it is crucial that users can quickly, easily and safely have continuous access to correct clinical records - and consistency of user interface is key to this."

Richard Morris, Director - Inchware

Inchware markets and supports a suite of medical applications designed for use by healthcare professionals with small - 'inch-scale' - handheld computers. The small size of such devices permits essential mobility, but limits the device in other ways; for instance, memory capacity, screen size and data entry systems do not begin to approach the capabilities of a desktop PC.

Inchware's applications are unique, in that they are designed and built specifically to the 'inch-scale'. That is, they are simple enough to be presented on a small device, and to be used in one hand.

"Informatica Systems provides powerful, innovative and intuitive software for primary healthcare. Using the Microsoft Health CUI guidelines and toolkit will enable Informatica to more rapidly build its next generation of clinician focused products, whilst continuing to deliver the best-of-breed solutions that its customers have come to expect."

David Collie, Director - Informatica Systems

"The standardized formatting of how patient data is displayed has been developed in partnership with Microsoft Health CUI. This delivers a consistent and clear environment for the user - especially relevant as the clinical workflow continues to extend across interoperable systems."

Craig Rhodes, Innovation, Development and Support Manager - Map of Medicine

Map of Medicine is an online clinical knowledge resource that provides specialist level information to healthcare professionals across all settings. The Map provides a shared vision of the patient journey, creating a culture in which best practice can be applied every step of the way for better patient outcomes and efficient use of resources. It provides online access at point of care to comprehensive, current, evidence-based medicine in easy to use visual format. The Map supports service redesign for target delivery, improved referrals, healthcare community integration, proactive disease management and can help reduce pressure on acute services.

"MedicMate is all about reducing oversights, generating efficiencies and improving communication, especially at handover in hospital. Therefore it is crucial that its clinical user interface aids users and eliminates misinterpretations. On meeting with the Microsoft Health CUI team, we discovered two things; 1. that Microsoft Health CUI spoke our language and had a very thorough set of sensible, usable design guidelines, but also 2. that, despite our best efforts, we had not got our clinical user interface perfect. By using the Microsoft Health CUI guidelines, we are working to put this right in v2.0, we only wish we had worked with the Microsoft Health CUI team in the development of v1.0"

Tim Rayne, Director - MedicMate

MedicMate allows healthcare professionals to manage their patient workload efficiently and effectively from their mobile device. MedicMate helps users keep patients, wards, jobs, and problems, up-to-date with quick entry methods. Healthcare professionals can handover wirelessly, keep protocols and guidelines in their workflow, maintain telephone and bleep numbers therefore no longer needing to wait for Switchboard, manage to-do lists, print paper lists (neatly), and set alarms, all on an encrypted database. Essential for wards, for clinics, and for on-calls. MedicMate, carefully designed by doctors and nurses who understand the problems and issues confronting frontline personnel on the wards, offers a unique solution to look after the healthcare professional.

"The Microsoft Health CUI initiative to provide standard and familiar interfaces to users of disparate clinical systems across the NHS and beyond, based upon extensive engagement with clinicians, developers and health informaticians, is an ambitious endeavor supported by SCHIN. We welcome Microsoft's desire to improve safety, efficiency and workflow within healthcare.

We were particularly impressed by the clear Roadmap and their championing of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight to provide the next generation of rich user interfaces, which we intend to adopt in our forthcoming products."

Martin Topping, Technical Architect - SCHIN

For fifteen years SCHIN has been recognized, within the NHS and internationally, as a leading centre for health informatics and software solutions. Pushing both the technical and human boundaries of implementing active decision support, SCHIN's Medication Review software is unique, indeed revolutionary, in its capacity to extract and screen information from medical records, flag up dangerous drug interactions and integrate healthcare systems, all to externally accredited standards of data security, confidentiality and data protection.