The agreement will wrap IBM’s technology, marketing and sales capabilities around Cerner Millennium, the company’s clinical, management and knowledge software application systems. Cerner applications will be optimized and integrated with the IBM server, storage and infrastructure software.
Such an end-to-end solution will help drive down the complexity, initial cost and daily operating expenses. With the IBM/Cerner solutions, healthcare institutions will no longer have to cobble together piece parts from different hardware and software suppliers to automate their operations.
The Cerner and IBM offerings also will help the healthcare industry minimize medical errors, which are estimated to cause thousands of patient deaths or injuries each year. For example, electronic-based medical records will be available any time to any appropriate hospital department unlike paper-based records that may be unavailable, lost or misread.
IBM and Cerner are helping hospitals break the spiral of escalating cost, preventable medical errors and inefficient operations, said Russell Ricci, M.D. and general manager, IBM Global Healthcare.
A recent Institute of Medicine report says that considerably wider use of information technology must play a central role in fixing what is now a disjointed and inefficient healthcare system in the United States. A Rand Corp. study confirmed that assessment, adding that the United States ranks a mere 37th in the world in overall health system performance.
SOURCE: COMPANY PRESS RELEASE
