This is the transcript from the interview/Podcast with Peter Neupert, Microsoft done on Wednesday last week

Matthew Holt: This is Matthew Holt and I am reporting for the World Health Care Congress and the World Health Care Blog. This morning I’m talking with Peter Neupert who is the Corporate VP of the Health Solutions group at Microsoft. Peter, good morning. How are you today?

Peter Neupert: Good morning, I’m great. Thank you, happy to be here.

Matthew: Great, so now you’re going to be appearing at the World Health Care Congress and I thought it would be good just to get a bit of teaser out about what we are going to be doing. This is the first of those two or three podcasts we are going to be doing for the World Health Care Blog, just in advance of the conference and at the conference itself. So, those of you who are listening we will be doing a lot more of podcasting and blogging and contributions about what’s going on in the conference. And Peter you are going to appearing at the conference to talk a bit about Microsoft in the consumer space but also Microsoft has been behind the scenes in health care and at the HIMSS conference where Steve Balmer gave a, how should we say, a very enthusiastic presentation about Microsoft’s new energy in health care. So, why don’t you tell me what you think the most important parts of Microsoft’s current role and then future role in health care are. What do you think the emphasis in Microsoft on health care is, just right at the moment.

Peter: Sure, thank you. It’s a bit of complicated beginning point. Microsoft is world’s largest software company and we have a few hundred people that are very engaged in building our partner ecosystem in the health care space. And we believe we have the best products from the development tools perspective, SQL Server all that kind of stuff and I was very excited to have Steve at HIMSS to take this to the next phase. That’s the part of the business we have been in for the last ten years and have been increasingly more relevant to people in the health industry whether they are hospital CEO’s and CIO’s, in terms of how we can build a solutions for that.

My role and exciting new things that Steve talked about at HIMSS is, we are now going to the next phase of our engagement with the health industry in developing unique solutions that have health specific technology applications or content. And that’ the role of my team. Mr. Bill does specific solutions. At HIMSS we talked briefly about Azyxxi and how great that is as an enterprise solution. And we also announced our acquisition of Medstory, which is a vertical search engine, which is really where we expect consumers to start their online web experiences. “Hey, I have this condition, I need to start somewhere” and we think the Medstory search solution will provide them the best context for somewhere they can start their web journey.

Matthew: That’s great. And you actually hit on part of the two complementary pieces that I love talking about in terms of health care.Lets talk first off up about your unpronounceable acquisition of last year. It’s pronounceable, its just not spellable as you can see. Tell us a bit more about what that does and in particular what problem it is solving? Because the problem it’s solving, and there are obviously competitors working on this as well, is a huge one within health care and many people outside health care IT aren’t quite aware of how bad this problem is? So, why don’t you spend a bit of time talking about what that’s doing and the problem it is solving?

Peter: Sure, thanks. You know, we are excited about the Azyxxi product and technology and really. The problem it is trying to solve is in many enterprises there remain even after the most advance, they deployed advanced systems of information technology. The remain islands of information, it is very difficult to be able to pull a unified enterprise view of what is going on in all the complex departments and all the complex information systems that exist within the hospital.

What Azyxxi is really good at, given its architecture–really a new information architecture–which understands the health enterprise and that is equally valuable for acclimation in the case of “gee I want to understand this patient history” and all the data about that patient relevant to that encounter or the quality control officer, which really says, “I want to know how we are doing against this new quality control matrix”, or the financial officer who wants to understand “gee why am I denied claims today and what was the source. What’s the root cause of that denied claim?” When implemented, has it been deployed in Medstar health system, it’s really this enterprise platform against which they can run a lot of different tools, which are views into their data.

And the unique thing about Azyxxi is that it can slice and dice and create any of these arbitrary views with context and meaning associated with them. And so, we are pretty excited about how that might work. We have talked about two customers so far, New York Presbyterian which wants to deploy across their enterprise and Johns Hopkins Medical System, who is going to deploy across their environment to solve precisely these types of need. How can they get this sort of unified view? while still having best of breed systems that they have in place already.

Matthew: Yeah, I think the whole trouble to the question both within enterprise and between enterprises is the huge one to health care and I think we’ll continue to discussing that for many years to come, I guess. But I think I was talking to some CIO a while back and he told me that on an average in his facility that there were something like 150 interfaces between departmental systems and the other systems to be put together and the management of that is just so complex that you’re in need of that solution. That’s really fascinating. Let’s switch over bit to the other side of the wall and you’re going to be saying a bit about this, talking a bit about this at the conference. But this is the consumer side of world. And there I guess, there are three pieces in health care, there’s the enterprise provider side, there is the stand‑alone consumer information side, which you know obviously Microsoft has with MSN, but there is WebMD, and there is now Revolution, and a lot of folks trying to create value in that space as well as many different vertical and specific content providers and search providers. And then there is communication between them and I know that Bill Crounsehas been discussing some of the ways that Microsoft with its own employees has been involved in messaging between providers and patients. So, give me a sense–you mentioned the Medstory acquisition already–of where the various Microsoft properties and Microsoft empire is in that part for consumers and consumers communicating with providers.

Peter: Well, it’s a interesting question and when you really think about consumers needs and what is important to consumers you see that most of the existing activity doesn’t really meet that consumer need yet. It’s a great beginning. We are really in the first inning of how can the web and connectedness transforms the way consumers experience the health delivery system. As the web is transformed, the way we work, travel today for many of us, the way we interact with our banks and financial service firms, the way we consume news. All of those industries and more have been transformed for consumers. And medicine and the health delivery system is a large chunk of activity and need states that hasn’t yet been transformed.

The information sites do a good job in different ways of trying to help consumers at least understand a certain set of things. But understanding is only one phase of what the consumer really wants to do, at the end of the day. They want to be able to take action and improve their outcome. We believe that it is the combination of information and data, personal data, that will perhaps lead to better end‑user experiences over time than information only.

The consumer has a very similar problem to the enterprise one we just talked about, which is, my data’s spread all over the place. My pediatrician has my history as a kid, my internist has a view of some things. My specialist who did some work on me has a different view of particular piece of it. My health plan has different views. When I go into the next encounter, I can’t easily deliver that information in sound bites relevant to the physician who’s going to try to treat me.

I think that’s a problem and an opportunity. And I think many other people believe the same thing, that there needs to be a way and opportunity for consumers to be able to collect a copy of their information in a way that is useful and relevant to them and to future service providers who will deliver value to them. Over a long period of a time, a transition, that will happen in the way the web will transform how consumers interact with the medical delivery system. Does that make sense?

Matthew: That’s true. Yeah, that makes sense. That’s pretty interesting, because let’s talk a little bit about the panel you’re going to be on. It’s a panel that’s going to include moderator Jim Guest from the Consumers Union, but also three tech heavyweight organizations: yourselves, Microsoft, Adam Bosworth who’s running health care at Google, and Craig Barret from Intel, obviously a Microsoft partner but has its huge own internal digital health initiative. They’ve been making a lot of noise recently about something you just pick up on, essentially personal health records, or health records attached to patients. Intel has announced part of an employer coalition that’s going to be working a personal health records system that’s going to be developed. You sounded as though you were hinting in that direction as well. Is Microsoft working on something in that area? Is there something you want to talk about now, or you’re going to announce at the conference, something that’s more of an organic‑‑

Peter: I’m not announcing any products today. I don’t expect Adam to announce any products on Tuesdays. I think it’s really a recognition of a problem and a need state where technology can probably make some changes and perhaps deliver some value. But there are a lot of issues that need to be addressed, resolved, considered before anybody’s really prepared to be able to deliver on the promise. But us technology guys‑‑I always like to say, it’s important to think about where you want to be three years from today, and build the right architecture and implementation to be able to accomplish that, not just what you want to get done in the next six months or twelve months time‑wise. And so, I think it’s really important to have a deep understanding of the problem space and the opportunity.

There’s lots of PHR’s out there. WebMD has one that has been deployed in lots of different places, and there’s 60 other ones. It can’t just be about a PHR. It has to be about what is the right environment and platform and ecosystem that will deliver real value to consumers in terms of understanding their specific situation, and perhaps how do they can connect that specific situation with the complex health ecosystem that exists out there. Clearly Adam has experience in creating these kinds of things in the past. I have experience in creating these kinds of things in the past. Intel has said from an employer perspective that, “Hey, we’re just going to get started.” I applaud them in terms of getting started, and trying to put a stake in the ground of a direction in terms of what their expectations are from their suppliers. In this case their supplies are either health plans or providers, in terms of how they’re going to share data. I think that’s an important stake in the ground, and I support that.

Matthew: That’s great. So, just for those of you listening, that is another conference that will be on Tuesday morning, starting at the bright and early of eight A.M. with the group that I mentioned from the Consumers Union, Intel, Google, and Microsoft–Peter will be on that panel. So, Peter, the last question. What are you personally hoping to get out of the conference, and what are you looking forward to in terms of all the different tracks and all the different activity that’s going on at the World Health Care Congress?

Peter: Well, I think it’s a great opportunity to engage with people that have perspectives and different approaches to the problem. This is the third one I’ve attended as I’ve re‑entered deeply into the health industry space. I really hope people focus on steps we can take to move the ball forward. Less time talking about defining the problem. At least in my view the problem space is reasonably well‑defined today in terms of the investment and information technology, and the consequences of patient quality and outcomes and all that other stuff, the disincentives for providers to invest and the funding issues. I know I’m going to engage with folks on what steps can we take to deliver on a roadmap that leads to better outcomes for all, both our businesses and for patient outcomes over the next few years.

Matthew: That seems like a pretty good place to start, at least. Well, I’ve been with talking with Peter Neupert. He’s the corporate Vice‑President of the Health Solutions Group of Microsoft. As I just noted, he’ll be on the panel at the World Health Care Congress in Washington D.C. on Tuesday morning next week, starting bright and early at eight A.M. I look forward to hearing your panel and seeing you there, Peter. Thank you very much for being on this podcast.

Peter: Thank you, I enjoyed it.