IBM announced that it is collaborating with nine business partners to help healthcare providers, clinics and hospitals improve productivity, increase quality and reduce costs through the use of service oriented architecture (SOA). These partners are all working to develop their latest healthcare applications using the IBM SOA Foundation (US) and supporting a set of open technology and industry standards.
IBM's healthcare strategy (US) is based on the adoption of an SOA approach and the use of open standards and standards-based electronic health records to provide secure and private exchanges of records between authorized healthcare provider and healthcare payer organizations. To achieve these goals, IBM is currently working with clients within the healthcare industry to transform the information delivery processes and related business processes to be more "patient-centric."
Clients who deploy infrastructures based on this strategy can improve the quality of healthcare delivered to their patents while reducing the costs and expenses of providing these healthcare services. SOA can also allow these healthcare providers to increase their agility to meet future changes as the healthcare industry adopts new regulations or embraces new methodologies in the delivery of care.