Updated Microsoft Health Clinical User Interface Furthers Clinical Effectiveness, Increases Patient Safety

REDMOND, Wash. — May 13, 2007 — Healthcare developers can take the next step toward increasing patient safety and clinician effectiveness with new version 1.3 of Microsoft Health Common User Interface (CUI), available today from Microsoft Corp. A portfolio of user interface guidance, software toolkit controls and showcase demonstrators, the Microsoft Health CUI supports software developers in delivering safe and effective clinical applications. The guidance and controls from the CUI are available at no cost and are focused on critical patient safety issues such as medication input, patient identification and key information display – all known major causes of potential safety incidents. Version 1.3 also provides an 18-month roadmap of product releases, substantial guidance updates and utilizes Microsoft Silverlight technology to showcase the latest demonstrators.

Developed in collaboration with and in use today at the National Health Service (NHS) in England, the CUI became available to all healthcare developers worldwide in July 2007. The CUI allows software developers flexibility to develop solutions to meet their own specialized development challenges and spend more time focusing on innovating and facilitating patient care through their software applications. Most notably, version 1.3 moves the CUI to a new technology platform with fresh controls, samples and demonstrations now being developed especially for Windows Present Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight. The use of both platforms within the CUI allows software developers access to healthcare-specific implementations of these technologies, providing richer and more flexible user interfaces. In addition, an 18-month new release roadmap for the design guidance and controls is available today and is intended for software and application developers who want to better understand updated timelines and how they can participate as part of the Microsoft Health CUI community.

“A common look and feel to systems across any institution decreases the chances for errors, but nowhere is that more important than a healthcare institution where lives are at stake,” said Tim Smokoff, general manager, worldwide health for the Worldwide Public Sector at Microsoft. “Sharing the roadmap for the next 18 months allows developers to plan for new updates to the Microsoft Health Common User Interface, meaning they can implement them faster and with better success, reducing the chance of mistakes and challenges.”

Potential Benefits for Healthcare Institutions and Partners

Today’s announcement furthers Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to help leverage the power of software to transform the healthcare industry for patients, healthcare providers and professionals. The CUI design guidance sets standards for the display and interaction of key clinical data within electronic patient records, such as medications, clinical notes and demographic information. The toolkit turns the design guidance into software components that developers and health customers can deploy, at no cost, in their own existing or upcoming clinical applications, saving their customers both money and time to market.

“The Microsoft Health CUI is a key building block to increasing application time-to-market, clinician productivity and increasing patient safety across the healthcare industry,” said Roger Killen, Managing Director, The Learning Clinic, a UK-based healthcare industry consultant aimed at improving patient care and outcomes. “As an organization developing healthcare applications, it’s an essential planning tool to know when updates to an application as critical as the CUI are coming so we’re excited to have a roadmap available.”
Since the CUI launched last July:

• More than 1,100 individual pieces of user interface guidance have been published
• More than 110,000 visitors have been to http://www.mscui.net
• More than 12,000 have downloaded individual guidance documents and
• Almost 7,000 visitors have downloaded the toolkit controls

The Healthcare Framework All Connects

Application of the CUI is an important element of the Connected Health Platform, Microsoft’s implementation of the Connected Health Framework (CHF) Architecture and Design Blueprint, a platform-agnostic set of design guidance and tools for delivering services oriented architectures (SOA) for health.

More information, including downloads of the MS Health CUI, can be found at http://www.mscui.net. Additional information about the Connected Health Framework can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/industry/healthcare/businessvalue/chframework.mspx.
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