The Collaborative Health Showcase represents an integrated healthcare solution demonstrating the interoperability of systems along the continuum of patient care.  The focus of the Showcase is cohesive patient-focused healthcare, supported by world-class information technology providing clinical and financial benefits to the health sector.

The Showcase is based around the journey of a chronic care patient, in this example someone with diabetes, through a variety of care settings.  It integrates the applications and services of six participating software vendors using “off the shelf” business tools collectively to create workflow management and online clinician collaboration.

Each participating vendor brought their own well-honed expertise to bear to produce the Showcase, which features:

• the development of a federated, standards-based, patient oriented, Electronic Health Record
• an incremental approach to technology use, leveraging existing success
• the addressing of a range of clinical priorities, including:
  • informed decision making for acute events – primary and community health event summaries accessible in hospital systems
  • accurate capture of administrative and clinical information – closing the loop on lab outreach orders and results
  • better decisions, less mistakes – decision support with rich data, resulting in an individualized, clinician editable, actionable care plan
  • patient engagement in their community based care
  • closing the information loop, hospital summaries in primary and community systems

• the use of “off the shelf” technologies to reduce cost and risk
• “plug and play” capability for all the applications

The Showcase demonstrates aspects of Microsoft’s Collaborative Health Strategy “live” with real systems.

The Collaborative Health Showcase was funded by Microsoft New Zealand, the New Zealand Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FRST) and New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE). Participants of the Showcase are members of the New Zealand Health IT Cluster: Enigma, Healthphone, Houston Medical, Precept Systems, Simpl Health, Sysmex and Vodafone New Zealand.