Microsoft, GE Tackle Healthcare Analytics, Data Aggregation

For the second time in a year, General Electric's GE Healthcare subsidiary is establishing a joint venture with a major technology partner, this time, software giant Microsoft.

In forming the venture, Microsoft is effectively exiting the enterprise health IT business, as the Redmond, Wash.-based behemoth will transfer its Amalga healthcare data aggregation and analytics platform to the new entity. The yet-unnamed venture also will take ownership of single sign-on products Microsoft Vergence and Microsoft expreSSO, as well as health information exchange platform GE Healthcare eHealth, and GE clinical knowledge application Qualibria. The latter is a project with longtime GE development partners Intermountain Healthcare and the Mayo Clinic.

Microsoft will retain full ownership of HealthVault, its widely publicized but underutilized consumer-centric personal health records platform, Microsoft health solutions group general manager Nate McLemore told InformationWeek Healthcare. "The joint venture will leverage that," he said.

Likewise, GE Healthcare will keep its Centricity electronic health record and related products, as well as its long-established medical device business.

The 50-50 venture, which will launch in the first half of 2012 pending regulatory approval, will market an open-source technology platform and develop clinical applications with a focus on interoperability of health data and advanced analytics. Both companies said that a joint venture is the fastest way to react to a market that's shifting from looking at patients in isolation to paying greater attention to improving population health.

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