If we combine cloud technology, productivity and collaboration tools, with powerful clinical decision support, we can deliver an electronic health record experience to clinicians and patients that drives collaboration and reduces waste. In a time when healthcare providers face unprecedented financial challenges and obstructions to patient access, solutions like these are critical. Effective healthcare delivery is powered by strong data sharing and a full patient record. As I’ll discuss, harnessing the cloud and its unique benefits in HIT solutions clears the path to improved care.
Recently, we were excited to announce Allscripts is extending our long-standing strategic alliance with Microsoft for the next five years. This will make Microsoft the cloud provider for Sunrise™ EHR, enable the development and delivery of further cloud-based health IT solutions and create a more seamless and highly productive user experience for our clients.
At an industry summit in 2020, Microsoft cited the outcomes its technology offers to healthcare providers, including improved cybersecurity, organizational performance and cost, and user experiences for clinicians and patients alike. Microsoft is also dedicated to faster interoperability and overall innovation. As partners, we hope to continue opening co-innovation opportunities to help transform healthcare with smarter, more scalable technology, not only throughout this year but in the future.
Cloud-based solutions already support many of those benefits beyond on-premises versions. Our solutions built on Microsoft Azure Cloud will provide enhanced cyber safety, faster deployment, and more resiliency. Azure Cloud gives us the ability to easily integrate voice and location services or collaboration tools like teams and visualization tools such as Power BI. The cloud-based solution will also include expanded analytics and insights functionality that includes devices and signals using the Internet of Things.
We expect these developments to positively impact patients in community and rural U.S. hospitals, which have been especially impacted post-COVID, all the way to the larger international organizations we serve. Community providers, who may have particularly suffered financially, will benefit from efficient systems and advanced revenue cycle management. Larger health networks can continue to share patient data rapidly and safely across providers, strengthening the care they deliver to populations.
Overall, our partnership with Microsoft is focused on improvements for clients ranging from organizational effectiveness to clinical usability and patient experience. Care teams will be able to obtain the right information at the right time, which will result in the right decisions in treating patients. Clinicians will be able to manage the “interruptions” to care delivery they cite as seriously detrimental to their user experience. In addition to an improved experience, patients will have greater access and control of their health records through the cloud-based version of Allscripts Sunrise EHR, enabling them to make better care decisions for better health outcomes.
Other Microsoft tools will further support practical functionality of care. Platforms like Microsoft Teams allows clinicians to find new and efficient ways to collaborate with each other without compromising the traceability of the EHR. Mobile functions will also be crucial in delivering the right information, at the right time, on the right device for clinicians and patients. The cloud factors in here too, as accelerates our ability to make visible the data we already have. For further functions, the cloud-based Sunrise solution will offer a marketplace for healthcare apps and third parties to easily integrate with a hospital EHR.
The COVID-19 pandemic will change how healthcare is delivered, especially patient expectations. As telemedicine has become a regular practice for many clinicians, who are now comfortable working across venues, and patients, who are now accustomed to receiving and tracking their own data. Provider organizations around the world desire innovative, interoperable and lower-cost IT solutions that meet the needs of this new normal.
Cloud-based solutions, along with mobile options, and telehealth functionality—these are the foundational tools for not just the future of healthcare, but the present. In collaborating with Microsoft, the leader in the public cloud sector, Allscripts Sunrise will efficiently deliver the tools caregivers need to improve the performance of their organizations and the health outcomes of their patients.