Azyxxi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Azyxxi (pronounced ah-ZIK-see) is health care software program designed to retrieve and display patient information from many sources, including scanned documents, electrocardiograms, X-rays, MRI scans and other medical imaging procedures, lab results, dictated reports of surgery, as well as patient demographics and contact information. It was developed by doctors and researchers at the Washington Hospital Center emergency department in 1996, and has since been adopted at Georgetown University Hospital and five other hospitals in the MedStar Health group, a nonprofit network in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. area. ^[1]

Azyxxi is a “data exploration engine” that extracts and organizes data from existing clinical systems rather than replacing them. The Azyxxi software system allows access to the various kinds of patient information hospitals have in electronic form, but cannot access due to different computer systems and software programs across departments, such as lab, X-ray and medical records. A physician using Azyxxi can obtain within seconds a patient's past and present hospital records, medication and allergy lists and lab studies, as well as viewing X-rays and other images, and then place orders for additional tests or medications. Since the system was first implemented in 1996 by the busy Washington Hospital Center emergency department, average waiting times were dramatically reduced, and more than twice as many patients are treated with only a small increase in staff.

Azyxxi currently runs on Microsoft Windows Server™ operating system and uses SQL Server 2000 as the data store. ^[2] A web browser-based version of the Azyxxi application is available for users of the Palm handhelds ^[3] and internet access to Azyxxi data is available securely on physician office computers. ^[4]

Microsoft announced in July 2006 that it was acquiring Azyxxi as part of a plan to enter the fast-growing market for health care information technology. The need to quickly collect, sort and display health information from many sources is needed to develop regional and national health information networks. The company is also hiring Dr. Craig F. Feied, principal designer of the software, and 40 members of the development team at Washington Hospital Center. Dr. Mark Smith, who helped design the system, will remain at Washington Hospital Center as director of the emergency department.^[5]