CHICAGO – Officials of the newly created Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions say the key to interoperability lies in one simple fact: When you’re bigger, it’s easier.
When you’re one of the largest electronic health record and practice management vendors in the country, they say, it’s easier to connect healthcare providers to your many products. And when you have the resources, they add, it’s easier to take on the challenges of innovation.
“The healthcare industry is one of the last on the planet to use (information technology),” said Mike Lawrie, chief executive of Misys plc and executive chairman of the new Allscripts. “Providers need to look for ways to improve their productivity, and this is one of them. This may play right into the economic environment.”
“We now have a platform to grow,” he added.
Last month, the courtship between British banking giant Misys and Chicago-based Allscripts came to a close when the two companies agreed to merge Allscripts with Misys’ Raleigh-N.C.-based healthcare subsidiary. The merger, which gives Misys control of the company’s purse strings and places operational duties in the hands of Allscripts and its CEO, Glen Tullman, had its share of detractors, but Lawrie and Tullman have been quite vocal in proclaiming the deal as a shot in the arm for the U.S. healthcare industry.
“The market believes in the underlying fundamentals of this transaction,” said Tullman. “Healthcare is not going to go away. The problems in healthcare have to be solved.”
The new company, based in Chicago, is one of the largest providers of electronic health record and practice management services in the country, with access to roughly 700 hospitals, 7,000 post-acute and homecare agencies and 150,000 physicians.
The key to the company’s survival now, both Lawrie and Tullman said, is innovation. Both say there will be several announcements over the coming months of new contract and products. Among them is a self-service kiosk, integrated with the company’s EHR and PM suites, that will be rolled out shortly at the Springfield Clinic in Springfield, Ill.
