Microsoft, GE Name Health Care Joint Venture Caradigm

Microsoft and GE Healthcare’s joint venture in health care IT now has a name. The companies are calling their corporate offspring Caradigm and have also installed a leadership team for the new venture.

With the name “Caradigm,” Microsoft and GE are looking to create a “paradigm” shift in “care” delivery from providing care of a single-patient episode to continuous management of the population’s health, Microsoft reports.

The new company will focus on aiding health care organizations and professionals through real-time intelligence in a health care system to improve the quality of patient care, according to Microsoft.

Following regulatory approval, the two companies plan to launch Caradigm by the first half of 2012. The company will employ about 750 people in the Seattle area near Microsoft’s home base of Redmond, Wash.

In December, Microsoft and GE named Michael Simpson as CEO-designate of the new company.

“We have an exciting opportunity to transform health care globally with an established open platform and a new generation of applications focused on population health,” said Simpson in a statement.

The Website caradigm.com currently belongs to CenCal Health, a health plan provider for Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, in California, but Microsoft and GE are in discussions with CenCal to acquire the Website, Bloomberg Businesweek reports.

CenCal let the “Caradigm” trademark close in 2010, Microsoft reports. The joint venture will have “an appropriate URL” by the time it launches, according to Redmond.

Microsoft and GE will demonstrate potential Caradigm products at the HIMSS12 health care IT conference in Las Vegas, which begins Feb. 20.

In addition to the new name, GE and Microsoft also announced Feb. 13 that Dr. Brandon Savage, the chief medical officer of GE Healthcare, will become chief medical officer and senior vice president, product strategy, in the joint venture.

Caradigm’s CTO and senior vice president will be Neal Singh, currently general manager of Microsoft Dynamics AX Global Financial Management. Dynamics AX is Microsoft’s cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform.

Meanwhile, Nigel Mason, who has been with GE since 1986, will serve as chief operating officer. Mason is currently director of GE Healthcare’s Commercial Centre of Excellence, which focuses on revamping the company’s commercial structure, processes and tools.

Microsoft’s health intelligence platform Amalga will now become a Caradigm product, and GE will move eHealth, its health information exchange (HIE) platform, and Qualibria, its clinical knowledge application environment, into the joint venture.

Savage is the “thought leader” for Qualibria, which is the result of a partnership between GE Healthcare and Intermountain Healthcare, a nonprofit health system that serves Utah and southeastern Idaho.

Caradigm will also offer Microsoft Vergence (formerly Sentillion), a single sign-on and context management solution. Microsoft acquired health care software vendor Sentillion in December 2009.

In addition, Caradigm’s product lineup includes Microsoft expreSSO, an enterprise single sign-on solution. The application features a wizard tool that allows health care organizations to implement single sign-on and retain total ownership of access throughout a hospital.

The EHR platform Centricity remains part of GE. On Feb. 2, GE announced a new version of its Centricity Patient Online portal, which adds Short Message Service (SMS) texting between patients and doctors, as well as connectivity to HIEs.

Microsoft will also keep its patient health platform, HealthVault, as part of the parent company. Redmond launched a Windows Phone 7 app for HealthVault Dec. 13.