Amalga Brand for Health Software

New versions of two recently acquired healthcare products will be sold under a new brand, Microsoft Amalga. Although the brand suggests that the products have been amalgamated, technical integration between them is minimal, and they will continue to be sold separately. Microsoft is likely to provide greater interoperability in future versions, however. Microsoft has also added new functionality to HealthVault, an online platform for storing and sharing healthcare information among consumers, physicians, hospitals, insurers, pharmacies, and other healthcare entities.

New Amalga Brand

The Amalga family combines the first Microsoft version of Azyxxi, acquired from MedStar Health in 2006, and a new version of Hospital 2000, acquired from Global Care Solutions in 2007.

Azyxxi, now Microsoft Amalga, integrates data from disparate healthcare systems and repositories into a single storage system and is aimed primarily at hospitals with mature IT systems. It extracts, stores, and presents data from specialized solutions, such as one for radiology and another for pharmacies, that are provided by different vendors and cannot exchange data. Because Amalga works with existing products, Microsoft says it can be fully deployed in less than a year.